• This article contains basic economics.

• Several sacred cows wander into traffic.

• Side effects may include disagreeing with yourself.

This is a story about adults who think money grows on trees, and the boy president who told them to grow up.

Part one was fun.

Part two is free.

Fun + Free = Cool Cal

President Cool Cal … that is.

Before we dive into the boy who became president, let’s do a short, not-boring lesson in economics.

If Bill Watterson can teach supply and demand in a few panels, hopefully you can survive five minutes of economics together.

“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.” ~President Cool Cal

A Conflict of Interest

Most public high schools don’t teach economics. If they did, we would understand scarcity and discover that Big Gov’s a giant Ponzi scheme. Therein lies the conflict of interest — double entendre intended.

1. The problem of interest is that it can’t keep up with inflation.

2. The problem with teaching economics is that it would lead to civil unrest. Our overlords don’t want us to understand their crimes.

Ponzi Scheme: fraud that pays older investors with new investors’ money.

Social Security funds will vanish in 2032, one year sooner than predicted. Our Grifter in Chief’s Big Beautiful Bailout shaved off a year.

The State’s solution is to keep us fat and “happy.”

“Pass the cheesy puffs!”
“Sportball!”
“Bash his brains!”
“Who’s brains?”
“His brains!”
“Why?”
“Because … he’s WEARING PURPLE!”

Am I making cents? If not, it’s OK.

You don’t have to drink my Kool-Aid to get on my bus.
You can be Left or Right or righteous.
You can be Red or White,
Tangled up in Blue.
Be whatever you want.
Just be you
and know…

Economics 101

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity – there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” ~Thomas Sowell

The irony is that all those who blame the Great Depression on President Coolidge are the same people making fiat currency, a.k.a. Monopoly money. To them, scarcity isn’t a problem. It’s a print job.

To them, money isn’t scarce. It grows on trees. It is the tree. Cut the rainforest and call it growth. Monetary expansion. Fuck oxygen. Who needs trees?

Big Gov needs dollars. The dollar is what we call in the biz a fiat currency.

Fiat /fee-aht/ - Latin for “because I said so.”

Therefore, dollars don’t have any inherent value unless you burn them for warmth. Speaking of which…

Fun Trivia

In 1923, Germans burned stacks of banknotes in stoves for heat, because firewood cost more than the cash. Burning banknote bricks was faster than hauling a wheelbarrow of bills to the store to buy a log. Children built Lincoln “Log” towers out of the “bricks” because they were cheaper than toys. Kids began calling their piggy bank the Lego bucket. Family budgets included a line item for “play money,” but it was just a joke. It was real money.

Eighty-five years later, Zimbabwe hit peak inflation at 79.6 BILLION percent a month. It’s a number that stops meaning anything after four zeros. A Freakonomics writer worked out the cost per sheet of toilet paper: about $0.004, or roughly 3,600 Zimbabwe dollars. A Z$1,000 note was worth less, so good stewards of their money would look in their wallet before asking, "Honey, are we out of toilet paper?"

Everyone older than 50: “Why does Bitcoin have value?”

That’s a rabbit hole, but in a word: Scarcity. There’s a limit. There’s a strict, hard-coded maximum supply of exactly 21 million coins.

Allow me to flip the question. Why does the dollar have value?

“Because they say so” isn’t a good answer, but it’s the correct one. The best answer is that we can all wipe our asses with federal fiat.

Monetary expansion (a.k.a. currency debasement) during the roaring 20s caused the Great Depression.

Which brings us back to our part one finale. Let’s rewind and recap the “great” depression that never happened.

When Washington Got Out of the Way

When Harding and Cool Cal took office in 1921, the country was already in a full-blown depression, with unemployment at 12 percent. GDP cratered. It was a royal mess.

So what did they do? They pulled a George Costanza and did THE OPPOSITE of what modern politicians instinctively do. They cut spending in half, slashed taxes, paid down the debt, and got the hell out of the way.

The depression was over in 18 months.

When Harding died, Cal was back in Washington within 24 hours. On day one, it was knives out. Deep cuts with zero patience for dissenters. Coolidge regarded a good budget as “among the noblest monuments of virtue.”

Under Cal’s administration:

• Unemployment fell from 12 percent to 3 percent¹

• U.S. industrial production rose roughly 20%²

• Real GDP expanded to 4% annually, more than double the average for the early 20th century³

My man.

Why Does Coolidge Take the Heat?

So if the playbook worked in 1921, why did the Depression happen on Cal’s watch?

It didn’t. It happened during Hoover’s.

Cal was never a fan.

“That man has offered me unsolicited advice for the past six years, all of it bad.”

Hoover was a sock puppet. The real criminals pulling all the political strings are the banks running the Federal Reserve – the same grifters I wrote about in The Greatest Theft in History.

While Cal was cutting spending and paying down debt, the Fed was quietly doing the opposite with monetary policy. “Quietly” because it’s been their M.O. from its inception.

The 1913 Federal Reserve Act was not drafted by congressmen. It was created by bankers, for bankers at a clandestine meeting on Jekyll Island, Georgia. Sounds like a Gothic Horror flick. We’ll call it Jekyll & Hide.

The cloak-and-dagger huddle was attended by reps from J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller interests, and the National City Bank of New York. Cabal members denied it for decades until it came out in one of the attendees’ memoirs.

The resulting institution granted private banks the exclusive privilege of creating money through lending — a privilege enforced by Big Gov and backstopped by taxpayer-funded insurance.

As I said, Cal was cutting while the Fed was flooding. They kept interest rates artificially low via monetary expansion. When credit is cheap, people do stupid things with it.

Businesses expand faster than reality supports. Investors borrow against optimism. Banks allowed speculators to buy stocks on a 10 percent margin, meaning people were borrowing 90 cents of every dollar they put into the stock market. Yikes! Gambling with borrowed money is insane. One dust bowl and you’re done. The market crash was inevitable.

A Secret Favor for the British Empire Started the Great Depression. London kept its gold. America got screwed.

Here’s what your public education left out of its history books.

July 1927, a secret meeting in New York City. Four men, four central banks, one agenda. Nobody in Washington was invited. They didn't need to own our central bank. They just needed to own the one man running it: Benjamin Strong, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, de facto power center of the early Fed system.

The plan they cooked up was simple: flood America with cheap credit to save the British pound, which was hemorrhaging gold it couldn’t afford to lose. Here’s the trick – gold moves toward wherever it earns the most. So when the Fed cut American interest rates, it kept British gold sitting safely in London instead of pouring into New York.

Strong called it “a coup de whiskey” for the stock market.

Translation: “Just one drink.”

Every alcoholic’s famous last words.

It was the final breath that popped the balloon in ‘29.

The Fed backed the rate cut by buying $300 million in securities, pumping fresh reserves into the banks. Total Fed credit jumped 58% in eleven months. Loans fueling Wall Street speculation hit an all-time high by early 1928. One favor for London turned into a year-long credit bender. Somebody always pays the tab.

History’s Favorite Scapegoat

Cal saw it. He warned about the fever of speculation and cheap money, but had no control over central banking. The whole economy was a tower of leverage built on fake price signals engineered by independent bankers.

President Coolidge still got the blame. Big Gov needed a whipping boy – but you can't blame him for lighting a fire when he never held the match.

When Hoover stepped in, instead of following in Cal’s footsteps, he panicked and pressed every button in the building (an inside joke from part 1). Hoover and FDR kept the alarms running nonstop, ravaging the nation for generations to come.

What Happens When You Ignore Economics?

Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930)
Slapped tariffs averaging 40-60% on over 20,000 imported goods.⁴ Other countries retaliated. Trade collapsed 67%.⁵ Unemployment hit 15.9%.⁶ Everyone learned something. Mostly nothing.

Spending binge: Cal left Hoover a $3.1B budget. Hoover ran it to $4.7 billion in three years — a 48% increase while the economy was imploding.⁷

Wage controls kept wages artificially high. Predictably, factories shed workers by the millions. Meanwhile, agriculture — which Hoover didn’t touch — let wages fall naturally. Ag employment held steady … because market forces work.

The tax hike in 1932 raised the top rate to 63%. Great idea. Cut the funds that create jobs during a depression. If you think there are too many people, this is a great way to cull the herd.⁸

Cal balanced budgets by not spending.

Cal watched all of it from retirement, furiously writing columns, watching the country do everything he’d spent six years preventing. He died in January 1933, two months before FDR took office and institutionalized the mess.

If Cal’s son hadn’t died, he would’ve run in 1928 — and the crash of ’29 would’ve been a footnote next to the one you didn’t know about in ’21.

Cool Cal said it better than anyone else

“Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.” ~President Coolidge

“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation, which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.” ~Silent Cal™

Sound like anyone we know?

“It is a great advantage to a President, for him to know that he is not a great man. When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.” ~Mr. Cool

Coolidge could see the writing on the wall.

“We overindulge in speculation, but ask the government to prevent panics. Now, the only way to hold the government entirely responsible for conditions is to give up our liberty for a dictatorship. If we continue the more reasonable practice of managing our own affairs, we must bear the burdens of our own mistakes. A free people cannot shift their responsibility to the government. Self-government means self-reliance.” ~The Prophet, Calvin MF’n Coolidge

The Lesson

Harding and Coolidge didn’t bail the nation out in 1921. Ordinary people did. They always do. It’s called the free market. It’s what free people do.

The most radical thing a government can do… is get out of the way.

Austrian economists have argued this for decades, while Keynesian con artists turned Hoover and FDR into fairytale folk heroes for expanding the machinery that created the crisis.

Cool Cal minded his own damn business. Men like him rarely survive politics. We can’t outsource responsibility to a once-in-a-millennium benevolent king. We, the people, need to save ourselves.

“Self-government means self-reliance.”

That’s his legacy.

The Silence of Cal

When Dorothy Parker was told that Silent Cal died, she reportedly said:
“How can they tell?”

You can’t. Not really.

Cool Cal lives in the silence.

He’s like a history book.

Ignored by the people who need him most.

The chapter everyone skipped explains the one everyone remembers.

I didn’t read much history growing up. I was too busy playing Sportball. I don’t regret it. I learned discipline, cooperation – all that, but I was pretty dull at dinner parties. Didn’t have much to say, but I knew the answer.

“Because … he’s WEARING PURPLE!”

I knew how to parrot the people who wore my color.

Changing My Mind

I used to be a bleeding-heart liberal. I used to raise my fists and shout the other side down … because they were big meanies. Then one day, basic economics had to go and crash the party. I learned that good intentions often hurt the very people they’re trying to protect.

Sometimes I think the good intentions were more about despising one group or fighting an unfixable system than they were about saving anyone.

Don’t think I’m letting conservatives off the hook. Their corporate welfare, warmongering, and tariffs are completely antithetical to stability and a sound economy. I argue with the Right as much as the Left. I’m an equal-opportunity BS detector.

America loves its independence, but politicians prefer compliance. Once you see that, it’s hard to keep blaming the crowd.

I don’t blame people anymore. Politicians spiked our punch. Their sociopathy makes me question their peoplehood. They wear different faces, but they’re one multi-headed chimera whose fire-breathing left the Great Depression smelling like arson.

I hate systems of oppression, not the people crushed beneath them. Both sides should either read each other or shut up and let ignorance be bliss.

Now I like everyone — all sides. Cool Cal taught me to be quiet and listen.

Two Books Told Me to STFU!

Behavioral Science changed my mind and likely saved my marriage. I learned about several group differences from a clinical psychologist named Jonathon Haidt. He wrote my favorite book, called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Instead of beating you over the head with dense logic, he masterfully uses metaphor and creative narrative to weave a story so the science is easier to digest.

The Righteous Mind is not about achieving righteousness. Far from it. Instead, it pokes fun at people who think they have “the righteous mind.”

Haidt traveled the world twice over to explain the specific values of the Left, the Right, and the religious. Haidt shows us how we evolved to rely on each other’s different world views to keep each other in check. Opposites attract kinda thing.

One book fixed how I see people. The next fixed how I see power.

Knowledge is Power

Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell, is a citizen’s guide designed to inform the public. No charts or fifty-cent words. Simple language, explaining ideas designed to help you understand the world, and how to follow the money.

Understanding money (and subsequently power) is one reason I’m a confident investor. It helped me understand how government policies affect industry, which is a major component of speculation.

Basic Economics is free on Spotify, and the narrator is MUCH more interesting than the sad sack who read it to me on Audible.

Sowell loved Cal. Bros from another mo’.

Now go.
Be quiet.
And read.

It Builds Character

Sources

1. The Forgotten Depression of 1920

2. Federal Reserve G.17 historical industrial production database

3. National Income and Product → Kuznets / Kendrick / Gallman series

4. Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression

5. World trade contraction 1929–1933

6. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey

7. Econlib (Library of Economics and Liberty), “Hoover’s Economic Policies”

8. IRS historical tax rates

• scholarship-worthy butt puns (circa 1970)

• one (1) ZZ Top, fully wireless, and

• a medicine man the law couldn’t cure

Reader discretion is advised. So is calling your father.

My dad’s in the hospital. Doc says all his energy is fighting infection, which explains the faraway look.

I sit and wonder what lies behind his emerald eyes as he stares into space.

If he could talk, he’d tell me. Maybe he’s watching his life flash by, telling himself stories to appease the pain.

He always wanted to write.

His papa wanted him to preach.

His English teacher took matters into her own hands and submitted his work to a colleague at the University of Miami.

One of his stories earned him a scholarship, even room and board. The colleague said my dad could live with her if he wanted.

He doesn’t remember the plot to his life last week, let alone a short story from a lifetime ago. It was called Buttons. My dad told me the premise once, before dementia began redacting chapters. I remember him describing the main character – how he’d sew secret messages on the bottoms of people who had earned his contempt. No joke. Or rather, it was precisely a joke, just told really slowly with needle and thread. He’d slip into their rooms, steal their trousers, then “write” a very special message just for them. These words of wisdom were quite literally the name of the story: Buttons or “butt ons.”

My father was ahead of his time – a writer’s writer, writing scholarship-worthy puns before bad dad jokes were a requirement for having kids.

He forgets how, but the colleague in Miami was somehow tied to A Patch of Blue. The film captured one of Sidney Poitier’s greatest performances. His character, Gordon Ralfe, falls in love with a blind white girl sitting in a park. He helps her navigate the parts of life that her parents had given up on. The film caused controversy before it was even released. Censors forced filmmakers to cut an interracial kiss to comply with segregationist laws.

The world wasn’t ready for A Patch of Blue.

My dad turned down the scholarship – had to cut it to comply with family standards of the time. The University of Miami was known to be a party school, so his passion was out of the picture. He was forced to go to Cincinnati Bible College instead.

The world wasn’t ready for my dad either.

It took him one semester to flunk out.

One semester to realize his father was bluffing.

That he would never be disowned.

That he could have chosen to live his own damned life all along.

In his story, Buttons were words written on the assholes of assholes — meant to be sat on. I’m sure the irony of his words being squashed does not escape his faraway look.

Before I was born, he gave it another shot. He was the photographer for our small-town newspaper in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio.

His proudest byline was the interview he did with ZZ Top before a big show in Dayton – featured on a full-page spread in the entertainment section.

His piece covered the debut of a new wireless system that revolutionized rock ’n roll. Billy Gibbons’ raw guitar signal was beamed offstage to the mixing board, where the audio was split into multiple tracks. Sound engineers became performers—adding effects, layering, panning, reshaping sound in real time. The wall of sound became a polyphonic tapestry you could “see” with your ears.

The piece was cutting-edge. It was the future of rock ’n roll.

And for that, he was fired.

His manager loved the piece, but the owner, who lived 1,000 miles away in Texas, caught wind of it and canned him – no questions asked. He said the God-fearing people of Nowhere didn’t like rock ‘n roll.

So he said, “Fuck it,” and turned to a life of crime.

That’s when society told my dad that helping malnourished cancer patients develop an appetite was against the law. He didn’t listen this time. He decided to live his own damned life and paid for that too. He went to jail for moving marijuana.

Antibiotics finally killed the infection. Dad’s talking again, telling stories back home with Pebbles cuddled up by his side, playing his guitar softly, staring into space. The gummies are settling in. His fingerpicking sounds like the years loosening their grip.

What lies behind his emerald eyes?

Stories. Always.

I read him several from my memoir — from our memoir.

Our lives flashed by.

A father shut down his son.

The newspaper shut down its journalist.

The law shut down the medicine man.

Dementia is trying to shut down another storyteller.

But he passed the baton.

He “sewed” a button on my trousers that said, “Finish my story!”

So I wrote what he never got to write.

For that, I dedicate my book to the man who gave me the words, who taught me how to craft songs, play guitar… to play baseball, football, goofball. He was really good at goofball.

Coincidentally, his last paid writing gig was where I got my first job as a paperboy.

Warning! This post contains:

• brief presidential nudity in a Derby hat (1903)

• aggressive napping, and

• one (1) hippopotamus.

Reader discretion is advised. So is a Derby hat.

“Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House.” ~President Calvin Coolidge

I could rest my case there, but we’ll keep going for all the crazy cat ladies.

Coolidge was the coolest. Forget politics. Let’s talk love.

For starters, the man attracted his complete opposite. Grace Anna Goodhue was the life of the party and maybe a bit of a peeping Tom. His soon-to-be wife was watering flowers at a school for the deaf when she spied him through a nearby window, shaving in front of a full-length mirror in nothing but tighty-whities and a Derby hat.

The big goofball heard Gracy cackling outside, and it was love at first laugh. Silent Cal didn’t have to speak. He could make girls giggle with a wink. Many years later, the 30th president took his deadpan vaudeville act to the White House.

The boy who became president

One of his favorite pranks as Commander in Chief was smashing every alarm button on his desk at once – then disappearing. Secretaries, Secret Service, and half the Cabinet would tear through the White House searching for him, while he hid behind the drapes, quietly laughing – trolling politics before it was a thing.

Clearly, Calvin had the heart of a young boy – specifically, one who thought the White House needed a giant mechanical horse in the dressing room. After Harding passed, one of President Coolidge’s first tasks was getting his robotic steed installed. He’d ride it often, sometimes in cowboy hats, other times in a full Native American headdress. In other words, he played Cowboys and Indians … with himself.

Then the boy president’s imagination became policy. Costume became character.

Indigenous people could only become citizens by serving in the military or by renouncing tribal membership. Cal thought that was wrong, so he signed their birthright into law, becoming the first sitting president to make an official visit to a tribal reservation.¹

It was then that Sioux leaders Chauncey Yellow Robe and Henry Standing Bear adopted him as one of their own, giving him a full-feathered headdress and the name Wanbli Tokahe — Leading Eagle.

His incredible work ethic was first recognized as vice president. Most veeps before him lived in relative obscurity, but Cal was the first in history to actually attend Cabinet meetings. Not some. Not most. All 100. So when Harding died, he knew exactly what to do on day one.

Despite being quiet, Silent Cal held more press conferences than any of his predecessors — about 96 per year. No president averaged more than 40 until Truman. Modern stats are embarrassing by comparison.

Average press conferences per year:

• Reagan: 6

• H. Bush: 7

• Clinton: 11

• Biden: 11

• Obama/Trump: 20

• Coolidge: 96

Transparency was important – almost as important as answering “No!” to all the stupid questions. It was his favorite word and a novel response in a town full of yes-men who’d say anything for cheap votes.

People exhausted him, but the page was where Silent Cal truly “spoke.” He wrote all his speeches and was known for being an excellent orator.

“A sound and wise statesmanship which recognizes and attempts to abide by its limitations will undoubtedly find itself displaced by that type of public official who promises much, talks much, legislates much, expends much, but accomplishes little. The deliberate, sound judgement of the country is likely to find it has been superseded by a popular whim.” ~”Silent” Cal

My favorite Tom was more succinct.

“When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.” ~“Silent” Sowell

Back to Cool Cal.

“I think the American people want a solemn ass as a President… and I think I’ll go along with them.” ~President Solemn Ass

My guy! … didn’t mind being the butt of the joke. And he was right. Most politicians need to shut the hell up.

Other notable Coolidges

“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.”

“Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still.”

“Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.”

“I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.”

“Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized larceny.”

Alliteration like that deserves respect. He’s speaking our language, Substack.

So raise your glasses. Here’s to the one and only president…

born on the Fourth of fucking July!

Seriously, the dude was red, white, and Pabst Blue Ribbon – the official beverage of bottle rockets and missing eyebrows, best served with minimal federal interference.

He hated government oversight so much that his definition of limited government involved several uninterrupted REM cycles.

His Coolness would often defend his nap schedule, telling staff members that when you’re asleep, you can’t fuck anything up. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but this next one’s verbatim. Cool Cal was known for waking up out of deep slumber and eagerly asking his aide:

“Is the country still here?”

“Yep.”

“Whew!”

Dude was a natural – hilarious without even trying. Once, Groucho Marx yelled out from the stage, “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Calvin?” He didn’t answer. Everyone laughed their asses off. His solemn-ass was second to none.

Sure, Silent Cal was a man of few words, but that means he treated words as if they were a precious resource. Sound familiar, Substack? Don’t answer that. Cal would tell you it’s rhetoriCAL.

Grace loved telling the story of a beautiful young socialite who sat beside her husband at a party and announced to the table that she’d bet her friends she could get more than two words out of the president.

Silent Cal looked at her, cool and calm.

“You lose.”

President Coolidge said more to his Raccoon than he did to most senators. He’d walk Rebecca around the White House on a leash and hold what witnesses described as the most animated conversations of his career. Historians have no record of what was discussed, but Rebecca the Raccoon, to her credit, never leaked anything to the press.

The president LOVED his animals – enough to fill the White House with them and eventually donate a black bear, lion cubs, a hippopotamus, a wallaby, wombat, and deer to the national zoo.

Then history stopped being funny, because people had to go and pin the Great Depression on him. It’s totally bonkers, but that’s part 2, so marinate on this finale while I figure out how to unfuck the fairy tale politicians love to spin.

Part one finale + Part two teaser

When Harding and Cal took office in 1921, the country was already in a full-blown depression, with unemployment at 12 percent. GDP cratered. It was a royal mess. So what did they do? They pulled a George Costanza and did “The Opposite” of what modern politicians instinctively do. They cut spending in half, slashed taxes, paid down the debt, and got the hell out of the way.

The depression was over in 18 months.

Content advisory

Part 2 contains the Federal Reserve.

Reference

1. “I Thought I Could Swing It”: The Strange Life and Presidency of Silent Cal

• your weird brother-in-law

• Graphic depictions of compound theft

• One (1) asterisk doing the work of the entire universe

Reader discretion is advised. So is a towel.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it took Deep Thought 7.5 million years to calculate the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I discovered the answer this year at the age of 42.* That asterisk is crucial. It’s actually the answer, but it means nothing if you don’t ask the right question.

Who’s in control?

Nothing will stop the mega-rich from controlling their political puppets and distracting us from looking up. Look around. Neighbors fighting over jobs, healthcare, housing — your brother-in-law skipped Thanksgiving … again. Half your Facebook feed has written off the other half as deplorable monsters.

The world’s a mess, but the reason your dollar can’t buy a nickel has nothing to do with the Left or Right. Follow the money. Look up at the power keeping us down.

Power /pau̇(-ə)r/: 1. Fractional reserve banking. 2. The Fed. 3. Global “mafia.”

People /pē-pəl/: 1. Everyone who gets their dollar after The Fed spends it.

Power took $350 TRILLION from the People

Look at the greatest thefts in human history. Wars. Empires. Gulags. Now look at #1. The Fed, running continuously since 1913, beats everything else on that list by 8 times.

Private bankers and their cronies profit from spending the dollar at full value before it depreciates. Then we pay the price via inflation.

$350 trillion is hard to grasp, so to bring it home:

The average American worker making $60K per year loses 2.7 million in purchasing power over a 45.5-year career and 20-year retirement.¹

That’s roughly 113.7% of lifetime earnings in this model. It’s a slow boil. We don’t question the heat if it slowly rises for 65 years. Politicians and bankers know the masses won’t keep track. They cleverly passed the scheme into law on Dec. 23, while 27 other congressmen (who opposed the racket) had left for Christmas break.

“The Federal Reserve system was designed by bankers, for bankers. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act was drafted at a secret meeting at Jekyll Island, Georgia, attended by reps from J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller interests, and the National City Bank of New York. The resulting institution grants private banks the exclusive privilege of creating money through lending — a privilege enforced by the federal government and backstopped by taxpayer-funded deposit insurance.”¹

Politicians and bankers (one organism) claim they created the Fed to prevent global financial crises, but really, they just figured out a clever way to socialize mass theft. If Americans can’t understand it, we can’t protest. Or we’ll protest, but we won’t know who to blame. Politicians then use our ignorance to blame the other “side.” Both “sides” benefit from the same evil. As their theft compounds, so does our hate for each other.

The real battle is not Left vs. Right. It’s always been Up vs. Down.

From 2020 to 2024 alone, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Americans lost 20% of their purchasing power.² If four years cost you a fifth of your purchasing power, imagine 113 years of the same machinery running.

Under an honest monetary system, your dollars should gain purchasing power as productivity improves. Things would get better and cheaper if we weren’t printing “monopoly” money.

Healthcare costs 17% of GDP and is climbing. A house costs 16 times what it cost your parents. Tuition is up 1,200% since 1980.

If the average American had that $2.7 million, they wouldn’t be fighting with their neighbors. We’d live as we did in the ‘50s when we had disagreements, but could still be friends.

Both parties (and any human) will “print” money if it’s legal. But robbing the middle class and the poor to make the insanely rich more powerful is pure evil.

Ron Paul said it a million times. It’s time to…

END THE FED!

My people. You aren’t dumb. You were just taught to trust the system. Your government-run education will NEVER teach anything this incriminating. Plus, new worldviews challenge your entire way of life. Even if you’re curious, nobody has time to read 113 years of monetary extraction data. It’s why my source summarized the scheme into fun visuals with plenty of snark to keep you entertained. Give her a try.

This is why we write. Artists and authors write the words that others can’t quite articulate.

This whole mess is what happens when you let bankers architect society. I’m a banker, so I should know. Please don’t hate me. It’s just my 9-to-5. It’s how I feed my kids. But now that I understand the system, I have a moral responsibility to tell you. Join me. Join the cause and subscribe.

First: Disillusionment.
Second: Hope.
Third: Freedom.

What’s the answer?

The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42.

The Hitchhiker's Guide had it right all along. What you don’t know is that in nerd language, 42 represents the asterisk.

42 = *

That single, solitary star is the answer. It’s the "master key" in computer programming – a wildcard. An asterisk can stand in for anything. One might conclude that it represents total freedom.

The answer has always been freedom – in our lives and in every interaction.

Who’s in control? I am. You are. We all have the right to be free.

It took me 42 years to figure it out, but here we are, solving the secret mysteries of the universe together.

Power to the People

American ingenuity is just about the only thing saving us from politicians driving us off a cliff.

“Thomas Edison brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. The Wright brothers got us off the ground, not the Aviation Administration. Henry Ford ended the isolation of Americans by making cars affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who helped Americans the most didn’t go around loudly expressing ‘compassion’ for the poor. They found ways to make things more productive, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.” ~Thomas Sowell

Don’t thank Big Gov. Thank the people and honest industry for bailing us out.

Headlines of Hope

People advancing technology will save us again. There are thousands of unsung heroes hidden from the news. Corporate media knows the behavioral science – that fear weighs (and pays) twice as much as anything resembling hope, so of course they sell terror 24-7. But it’s only half the story.

I recently finished a 5-year project collecting all the good news in the world (and Far Side Cartoons)! It’s all tech, energy, and medical “miracles” that prove we can self-organize and save ourselves.

Government monopolies destroy entire nations, but smaller decentralized systems are easier to manage. Anarchy was never a society without laws. By definition, it’s a society without rulers. Anarchists replace slave owners with leaders, elders, and arbiters.

Most of the same laws and precedents developed over thousands of years would not only be practiced, but also enhanced via competing polycentric legal systems or networks that you can freely start, join, or leave.

Christopher Cook is writing a brilliant book exclusively on Substack called The Distributed Nation about how voluntary systems can replace centralized control. His ideas around polycentric law are especially enlightening. Who will build the roads? He’s got the answer. France already privatized 70% of their roads, and they’re immaculate. Toll roads. Competitive contracts. Simple.

A voluntarist society must be built on persuasion (not coercion), so it’ll take decades and likely an economic collapse or two to evolve into a new paradigm.

But we can start changing the definitions today!

Power: Freedom*

People: Sovereign individuals.

Find your inner asterisk. You are your own sovereign star.

If you think anarchy is crazy, no worries. Just do one thing for me. Pick a cause, any cause, and support it … fiscally. Be the change. Struggling financially? Donate time. Build awareness. Share your beliefs. I’m trying to get people to believe in themselves, so help me spread hope, wonder, and love — forget anarchy if it sounds silly.

Or BE SILLY with me and DON’T PANIC! Carry a towel.

References

1. The Greatest Theft in Human History: breaks down the math. Discover how much the “mafia” stole from you based on your income level.

2. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Trends from 2020 to 2024.

Bonus Tin-Foil Hat Reading

This is the part where reasonable people close the tab … and the fun people keep scrolling. Just remember:

“Take one red pill, not the whole bottle.” ~Michael Malice

The ruling establishment

• Council on Foreign Relations: CFR is what people mean by the deep state. They’re an elite think tank that defines foreign policy and media talking points — all the top-ranking officials, billionaires, and bankers.

• Jeffrey Epstein was a CFR poster boy. He had a very intimate love/hate relationship with many of their VIPs.

Visuals and Diagrams

Culprits of global theft by NGOs, banks, media, and government:

• Who profits first from printing money?

• CFR infiltration in American Media

• CFR in media, gov, education, coups

• CIA infiltration in American Media

• How the CIA made Google (mass surveillance)

• Military Monopolization

• Censorship Industrial Complex

• Bank Monopolization

• Coups coordinated by CIA & MI6

• graphic nudity (financial)

• one (1) trillion fake betting slips, and

• bankers caught with their shorts around their ankles.

Reader discretion is advised. So are pants.

Naked shorting is killing America

… but there’s HOPE in ACTION.

Democracy.io makes it super easy to contact state representatives with a cut-and-paste message. Takes 60 seconds to raise hell and make a difference. Instructions are at the end.

The Naked Short scheme

I stacked this scheme against the 10 largest thefts in human history as my measuring stick.¹ At a trillion dollars, it sits around #7, just above Nazi looting of occupied Europe and below Soviet collectivization.

Big claims, so here’s the simple version.

If naked shorts were baseball bets

Imagine a betting ring. Legal bookies exist, they take bets, they pay out, and everybody plays by the rules. A criminal syndicate called the Network figures out they can print fake betting slips and flood the market. Suddenly, there are way more bets against your team (the Reds) than real bettors ever placed. The odds crater. Investors panic. The Network buys your team for pennies, installs coaches to throw games, then sells the insider info to other gamblers who bet against the franchise. The Reds bleed out in broad daylight.

That’s naked short selling. Print, dump, profit, except the Network is real. It’s your government and their banker friends. They’re all addicted to the same game. Nobody’s robbing the bank. The bank is robbing you.

Our criminal overlords consist of U.S. and European governments, along with their financial regulators, plus their federal banking cronies (Citi, Lynch, Wells, JP, TD, BoA, BNP, etc.).

The legal version

Shorting a stock is a bet that a company will fail. Speculators borrow shares, sell them at today’s price, wait for the drop, buy them back cheap, return the shares, and pocket the difference. Sounds shady, but it’s pretty healthy (if we lived in a free market). Smart analysts basically spot garbage companies (or maybe just a few bad decisions — temporary down trends), then they send the above signals to all the retail investor noobs, so that we don’t throw our life savings away – so we don’t lose our shorts (half-pants in this analogy).

The catch is that you have to borrow the shares first, BEFORE you can sell a short agreement. If you're already lost, push through. You don’t have to understand it to get the big picture.

The criminal version

Naked short selling skips the borrowing. Shady bankers are selling shares that they don’t have. See “sources” at the bottom for a visual explanation.²

Naked shorts are essentially fake betting slips or “phantom” stocks xeroxed out of thin air and dumped on the market, making it look like smart money is abandoning ship. Stock tanks. Panic spreads. The company can’t raise capital. And the Network is already waiting at the bottom to buy the org up at an incredible discount.

For 20+ years, JP Morgan, Chase, and a roster of major global banks have been accused of running this scheme against U.S. companies, siphoning what litigators estimate at over $1 trillion from American investors, businesses, and Uncle Sam. (Harrington Global v. CIBC, S.D.N.Y. 2022).³ Researchers put the real global number at multiple trillions. Nobody knows exactly, and that’s by design. The data that would settle it sits locked inside the DTCC. They’re a clearinghouse that settles U.S. stock deals … which is owned by the banks running the scheme.

Convenient.

Why doesn’t the SEC Stop It?

The “cop” assigned to bust the criminal bookies wrote the gambling laws himself, full of holes.

Market makers (the banks’ trading tentacles) get a special exemption from borrowing shares before shorting. Official reason: liquidity. It’s supposed to help speed up complex transactions. Actual result: a get-out-of-jail-free card for industrial-scale counterfeiting. They partially closed the loophole in 2008.

Partially. Lawyers can easily get around it.

The other trick is geography. When a fake position (betting slip) is about to get flagged for not existing, the bank ships the contract overseas to a European sister bank before the clock runs out. Crossing the Atlantic resets the timer, so phantom shares stay in circulation. Now repeat the process until you’re stupid rich.

Europe technically bans naked shorting of its own stocks, but there’s NO tracking and NO reporting for American stocks. Nothing. This loophole means Europe is perfectly fine bleeding American companies dry.

The SEC and Europe’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) didn’t technically “legalize” naked shorting. They just wrote the rules full of holes and developed a profound interest in looking the other way.

Cronyism + Capitalism = CRAPitalism.

Hollywood accidentally wrote the Network’s confession in 1976. Nobody listened.

“There are no nations. There are no peoples. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet.” ~ Arthur Jensen, Network (1976)

We didn’t know it at the time, but Network turned out to be a documentary.

How naked shorting kills U.S. companies

Once naked short sellers tank the stock, they buy a controlling stake for pennies. Then they buy board seats, fire competent executives, and install moles to make terrible decisions. Remember when Toys R Us decided in the ‘90s that it was a bad idea to invest in the internet? That was new management.

Naked as jaybirds.

Then the moles sell their insider info to other short sellers who make billions off the slow death of American companies. Employees get laid off. Families are wrecked.

Joe puts a gun to his head, so Tarquin can put another house in the Hamptons.

Tarquin /ˈtɑːrkwɪn/: A man who’s never created anything of value, but owns everything anyway.

When the little guys fight back

GameStop and AMC are the exceptions that proved the rule. We found out, held our shares, bought more stock, and forced the banks to cover fake bets at full price. They lost billions. It was glorious.

Occasionally, they get caught with their shorts around their ankles and settle out of court for tens of millions – pocket change for banks. Overstock.com squeezed a few pennies back from Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

So we slap them on the wrist, elect their friends into regulatory positions, and the Network keeps spreading its tentacles into your wallet. The same banks that own the Fed are also running the scheme. More government won’t fix this – they’re already in bed together. More regulation gives them more moles, more blanket immunity.

Politicians don’t care because:

1. It’s above their IQ.

2. They’re in on it.

3. Whistleblowing is dangerous.

This may not be safe for me, but I’ve had a good life. Truth is more important. If I have a mysterious “weightlifting accident,” the truth will live on.

We’ll never be free until we end the Federal Reserve. End the cartel. Return sound money and sovereignty to the people. It doesn’t have to be bloody. There are simple solutions.

What actually works

Reduce power. Increase punishment at the individual level. Kill corporate law (i.e. shield) that lets executives commit crimes and walk away clean. Fines or short probation stints for mass theft shouldn’t be slaps on the wrist.

South Korea never created that corporate shield – no deferred prosecution deals, no corporate veil to hide behind. Steal enough and you get mandatory minimum prison time. Stolen assets get traced and seized, not spent and shrugged off.

American regulators go after naked short sellers with fines that barely dent the profit. South Korea rewrote the math. Fines up to 5x the illegal profit, and – past $3.6M in illegal gains – up to life in prison, same as any other financial crime.

It’s not hard. Fraud will absolutely drop if there’s skin in the game.

Blockchain for the derivatives market eliminates the overseas shell game. You can’t reset a timer on a public immutable ledger. Overstock.com has already proven that blockchain prevents naked shorting. This is why the future loves crypto and Bitcoin. #GoodTechSaves

Vote with your wallet

Boycott the glafia (global mafia)

JP Morgan Chase / Citi / Citadel Securities / Goldman Sachs / Merrill Lynch / Wells Fargo / Bank of America / TD Bank / UBS / BNP Paribas / HSBC / Credit Suisse … and Robinhood, which halted trading during the GameStop squeeze to protect mafia banks from retail investors who were sucking them dry. They named themselves after the guy who robbed the rich to give to the poor.

Political culprits: The Federal Reserve / SEC / FCA / DTCC and every politician who isn’t screaming at the top of their lungs.

My primary source is dense enough to make your eyes bleed. It’s a two-hour read with 215 sources.⁴ Proves everything … if you can stomach the banking jargon or death by a 1,000 acronyms. This piece is the Reader’s Digest version.

The biggest theft in human history

In part two, I’ll tackle #1: Quantitative Easing (QE) a.k.a. “printing” money out of thin air. Americans have lost $350 Trillion to this bad boy.

The average American worker making $60K per year loses 2.7 million in purchasing power over a 40-year career and 20-year retirement.¹

If we all had that $2.7MM, we wouldn’t be screaming at the Left or Right about whatever distraction the Network feeds us. It’s not that Left and Right issues don’t matter. It’s just that our supposed saviors are ripping us off, bought by the real villains, and will never fix the root of the problem … themselves.

Take a look at the list below. We have wars, empires, gulags – but the fractional reserve banking system, running continuously since 1913, beats everything else on the list by nearly 8 times.

The fractional reserve banking system, running continuously since 1913 is the biggest theft in human history. Our government “saviors” did this.

Same Network. Bigger racket. Looting our moms since 1913.

at the Art of Liberty Foundation, did the forensic accounting on #1. If this piece made your blood boil, his will make you scream.

“I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!!”

The classic 1976 film, Network, poetically captures the culture war. But we’re not divided because we disagree. We’re divided because division is profitable for the people at the top. Your neighbor didn’t steal your purchasing power. Your brother-in-law didn’t rig the derivatives market, so stop squabbling with each other.

Now breathe. Everything is exactly as it should be.

After disillusionment, we have to calm ourselves. We’ve GOT to be better than the banker. Anger is not who I am. It’s no way to live, and there’s ALWAYS hope in action.

This whole Up vs Down battle isn’t worth fighting in the traditional sense. An independent journalist and friend of mine lives out of a motel because he gets threats for exposing things like this. I can’t live like that. I have a family.

This fight will likely lead to more fighting and terror. We’ve seen this play out. Sure, we can boycott certain banks, and that might erode power over time, but it’s not enough.

The better path is to love … but not just some hippie-dippie mindset. We need to start building communities and BECOME the solution.

I’ve heard people refer to them as Network States — virtual nations built around shared values that eventually become physical communities. If a network adds enough value to a region, the surrounding state may adopt similar best practices and recognize the new nation, maybe join forces if it’s wildly successful. This is our fight. Freedom. It’s always successful. America used to be free.

This idea is already a reality in Honduras. They’ve created tax havens for entrepreneurs to rebuild their economy, so all the Libertarians are moving to Próspera. I’ve been talking to one of their leading scholars. From what I’ve heard, they’re kicking ass, living in a little paradise, becoming their own bosses with community, gyms, and great food. There’s another big one off an island near Singapore called the Network School. I like that. “School” has a better ring to it than “state.” Many other networks are popping up all over the world as people start to realize that self-governance works.

Let us become our very own network. Let us build modern tribes with elders, leaders, and arbiters who compete to resolve disputes quickly and fairly. Check it out if it seems interesting. Don’t be angry ... for very long at least.

This is my silver lining. I’m including this essay in my Headlines of Hope newsletter, so that we can all unite, so we can come TOGETHER and defeat the beast … peacefully.

In 60 seconds, you can make a difference.

1. Go to democracy.io and enter your address.

2. Your reps auto-populate. Click “Write them all!”

3. Paste the message below, enter your info, hit send.

Subject: Naked short selling is destroying American companies — act now

I’m a constituent writing to demand action on naked short selling. For decades, major financial institutions have been selling shares they don’t own, tanking American companies, wiping out jobs, and pocketing billions. Regulators have looked the other way.

The data is in federal court records. The practice is documented. The loopholes are known. What’s missing is the political will to close them.

I’m asking you to support full settlement enforcement, individual criminal liability for violations, and transparent reporting requirements for short positions — no more overseas shell games resetting the clock.

This isn’t partisan. This is theft. And it’s been going on long enough.

BOOM! You’re part of the solution now.

Keep your head up

Real solutions

I spent five years curating 100+ modern “miracles” that we can all support.

And do the same to part two in this series …

Dear Mafia Bankers, please don’t kill me. I love life.

I’m not dead. I feel happy!

Sources

1. The greatest theft in human history

2. A visual explanation of naked short selling

3. Court estimation of naked short losses

4. A trillion-dollar naked short selling scam (two-hour read)

Warning! This post contains:

• one (1) rock, thrown with malicious laziness

• dream-crimes against Lepidoptera, and

• unsolicited Kenny Rogers

Reader discretion is advised. So is patience.

“Oh no!!! Is she … ?”

A moment earlier, everything was peaceful and serene. It was a cool spring morning. I was lying on a quilt my grandma made, listening to the brook running through our backyard. That’s when I saw her.

I had to stretch, but I could just barely see the tips of her wings as they moved slowly in and out of view behind a patch of grass. If you ever see a butterfly flex like this, they’re not just flapping their wings idly. Everything they do has a purpose. This little dance is meant to seduce a worthy suitor. And since I didn’t see any other butterflies around, my ego and I were pretty sure she was putting on a show for us.

But we wanted to see all of her, not just a piece. Something told me to let it be, but I ignored it. Not only that, but I was too lazy to get off my ass, so I picked up a rock and threw it in the general vicinity, hoping the noise would stir the creature into flight. However, instead of throwing a strike on the outer edge of the plate, I accidentally hit the batter. “Oh no!!!”

I didn’t see her moving. “Is she …?”

I jumped up to confirm my suspicion, but it was too terrifying, so I woke up abruptly, breathing heavily, heart pounding.

I basically got kicked out of my dream for being an asshole.

“What the hell does that mean?” I wondered. But honestly, I didn’t want to know, so I decided to phone a friend. I knew my buddy Josh could calm me down. I must have woken him up, because he sounded annoyed; told me to chill. “Buddy, why don’t you roll over to my place and we’ll talk about it,” he relented.

When I got to Josh’s, he made some coffee and we went outside to enjoy the rest of the morning. He had a lovely front yard in a hip neighborhood near Belmont, where I went to school. It was all landscaped with trestles full of flowers, just starting to bloom.

“And then I woke up” were the words floating out of my mouth as I threw my hands up in the air.

Josh’s eyes were as wide as a pregnant woman’s areolas.

I thought I was telling a good story, but that wasn’t it. Spoken word has never been my forté. My mouth has never been patient enough for my mind to catch up. I’m only a decent writer ‘cause I can slow it down enough for my brain to hang.

Back to the story. Before I could say another word, I swear on my grandmother’s grave, a big yellow butterfly fluttered over my right shoulder and landed on my outstretched elbow.

Jaws dropped. Goosebumps sprouted as our neck hair stood erect. We were still as stalagmites.

“I’ve never had one land on me,” I whispered.

A euphoric rush of endorphins surfed my spine and exploded in my skull. My fairy friend must have felt the surge of energy, because her wings began flitting wildly. Her wings accelerated so fast that she began hovering in place. Maybe one of my goosebumps pricked her. Then she flew around my head a few times and floated off.

She had places to be, flowers to fertilize, dreams to catch.

Josh looked like a voyeur caught in the act. I was glad he was watching, though. I needed someone to vouch that I wasn’t still in a dream; that I was consciously participating in reality.

Me: “You’ll have to punch me cause a pinch won’t do!”

“Ow! Dude, I was joking.”

Josh: “See, man, she just dropped in…

[singing]

…to see what condition

your condition was in.”🎵

Me: “Ha!”

Josh: “She wanted to make sure you were all right. She said it’s all good man. Peace out motherfuckaaah.”

I don’t know what it means. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. It was just a dream. Maybe at the time, there was something beautiful just ahead, and I needed to be patient.

Try and capture a delicate thing, and you might crush it.

Spring awakens
The caterpillar cocoons.
Crack! Butterfly dreams

Dan Reeder doesn’t know what it’s about either.

Here’s a short little ditty of his about waking up.

Dream meanings

Btw, my Sunshine Shaman interprets dreams. imi completed her MSc in Clinical Psychology and uses a Jungian approach to dream analysis. Check her out!

My baby butterflies …

• elected mouth breathers, observed in the wild

• one city attorney, resigning at full sprint

• two-click heroism (phone-compatible)

Reader discretion is advised. So is showing up.

This idea isn’t Left vs. Right. It’s People vs. Power.

Emma. Arya. Ridge. Three children were ripped apart from their parents because doctors misdiagnosed a rare genetic condition.

Police assaulted a homeless war veteran, tased his service dog, Sunshine, then buried the footage to hide their wrongful citation.

Police forcefully removed Rebekah Massie from a city council meeting while her daughter watched. Speaking her mind was her only “crime.”

It can happen in your town too. The police probably already “lost” the footage. But what nobody told you is that we don’t have to wait around for a lawsuit to swoop in and save the day.

We, THE PEOPLE, already have the tools to hold officials accountable. We’re already doing it. You just missed the memo.

This is the story of a new era in governance – a pilot for how we can bring power back to the people. Citizens organizing faster than corruption can hide. Real stories. Real superheroes!

Introducing, You Are The Power (YATP) – an amazing group of advocates and volunteers who dedicate their time to fight for your rights. What’s unique is how they package up materials, so that people like YOU can easily expose corruption in real time. Resolutions often come quickly because officials aren’t used to seeing their misconduct publicly displayed on social media.

Corruption is sometimes overturned within hours outside the court without expensive legal fees.

Success Stories

Since its founding in 2022, YATP has achieved a 98% success rate in bringing justice to 50 cases ranging from wrongful removals to unlawful force. It may not sound like a lot, but they’re a small group, and they spend most of their time researching cases to make sure they’re in the right.

One of their most active missions is reuniting parents with children wrongfully taken by child protective services. Essentially, doctors are mistaking a rare brittle bone disease for abuse. Their misdiagnosis can often put the kid in a foster home and the parents in jail. Then come the legal fees, and the 2nd mortgages – all because of a rare genetic condition.

Family Reunification

After THREE years of YATP fighting, Matt and Tuckey Hernandez were reunited with their daughters Emma and Arya. Their case became the catalyst to launch YATP’s Family Reunification Program, opening the floodgates and exposing wrongful removals nationwide.

Casey and Bailey Collins endured a similar battle to reunite with their son, Ridge. Their fight ultimately led to the passage of Ridge’s Law in Georgia, which grants families the right to seek a second medical opinion. A similar measure, Patterson’s Law, is now advancing in Florida on behalf of another YATP family still fighting to be reunited. Together, these laws are establishing a legal precedent that could spread across the country.

Similar reunifications

• The Whiting-Clarke Family was reunited with Anariah after 764 days.

• The Sullivan Family fought for 600 days and almost lost their kids forever.

• The Timms Family was reunited with Jameson after 1,180 days.

Government Accountability

Trespassing + unlawful force

Rebekah Massie, from Surprise, AZ was forcibly removed from the city council meeting because the town’s mayor passed a law banning criticism of … wait for it … city council meetings. Her 12-year-old daughter witnessed the whole thing. She got to see with her own eyes just how awful political mouth breathers can be and how amazing people are. YATP got the charges dropped. The mayor canceled his next run for office, and the city attorney resigned.

Police brutality

Gastonia, North Carolina police assaulted Iraqi war veteran Joshua Rohrer, tased his service dog Sunshine, and then buried the body cam footage. Sources say it was because police incorrectly cited the law while confronting the homeless man. Spike from YATP uncovered yet another scandal – that the city secretly shut down its only homeless shelter. He then got locals to storm City Council meetings until charges were dropped, footage was released, and Joshua had a roof over his head. Sunshine Ray was found dead shortly after being separated during his arrest.

One love

One Love Longview is a sanctuary for men and women whose mental limitations made housing nearly impossible. YATP exposed police violence against One Love clients, prompting the swift resignation of the offending Officer.

Director Amanda Veasey was charged criminally for letting her clients shelter on her own property during extreme weather. For 17 months, she lived under the threat of jail time and fines, but with support from YATP, the charges were dropped.

If this can happen to them, it can happen to your town!

But power retreats when people show up. Officials fear exposure in real time. They slip through the cracks until someone shines a light. This idea isn’t Left vs. Right. It’s top vs. bottom. And we need everyone.

We need YOU!

I believe private organizations like YATP are the future. They’re better equipped to meet individual needs and expose government corruption. But we need help. We need boots on the ground. We need Erin Brockovich. We need YOU!

I say “we” because I recently joined the force. Let’s be superhero friends!

1. Sign up now

2. Donate once, monthly, yearly

3. Send emails and give ‘em hell

Advocacy takes two clicks!

… on your phone

At the bottom of YATP’s active causes are email addresses for key officials. If you’re on your phone, just tap the email address. An email window will pop up, pre-filled and pre-addressed. The email is already written for you with all the talking points. You simply sign your name at the bottom and hit send.

1. Click

2. Sign

3. Send

It’s so easy. Laziness is no longer an excuse to suck at life. One minute of your time could literally be the tipping point that:

1. Reunites a family

2. Gives a crooked cop a surprise career change at Home Depot

3. Makes a corrupt city manager suddenly develop ethics

YATP Superhero Friends

Spike Cohen ran for president and got the 3rd most votes of any third-party candidate in the country, then built a movement to take power back from corrupt local governments.

Ryan Ralston helped pass Ridge’s Law in Georgia.

Elizabeth Melton founded an anti-surveillance org and launched a documentary exposing corruption.

Brian Lambrecht landed 70+ national TV segments, secured major newspaper endorsements, then turned that firepower on corrupt local governments.

Memo delivered.

Now let’s go shine a light.

It’s time to stand up and resist!

Jonathan Tyler’s a dissident like me.

• one (1) d!ck joke, repeated at full volume for the hard of hearing

• burial plans, premature but thorough, and

• an emcee named Em, beard included.

Reader discretion is advised. The exits are clearly marked.

I love old couples who can say anything in public without worrying what people might think of Em. We’ll talk about Em in a sec.

I was at the Florabama Roadhouse, attending the Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival. It was Wild Women’s Night, featuring some of the most badass songwriters from around the globe. An Irish singer-songwriter named Claire Cunningham had just slayed the audience before my best friend got up on stage.

Traditionally, the night is hosted by a burly dude dressed up as a woman – the bigger the better. It’s all for fun. This time, my buddy Buzz, I mean Em, was the emcee.

The place was poppin’. Every walk of life was there, getting rowdy, loving life. An older couple named Everett and Jamie were sitting at a large table behind us. Everyone in the room could hear them shouting into their spouse’s good ear.

We all learned they were celebrating their 54th anniversary, which knee gives out during a storm, and the details of Jamie’s burial plans, which felt a bit premature but very thorough … solid plan.

Em was mid-monologue:

Em: “I’m proud of who I am. I’ve always been a woman, – always will be – and if you don’t like it, then you can suck my d!ck!”

Everett: “What was that?”

Jamie: “D!ck! ... She said, You can SUCK MY D!CK.”

Everett: “Well that’s what I thought, but ...”

Jamie: “Turn up your ears, Everett!”

They got the biggest laugh of the night. The irony here is that the old couple grew up during a time when Em was too taboo to talk about, yet they were laughing their asses off while several younger folk got offended and walked out.

I told Em that she weeded out everyone we didn’t want to be around. We ended up partying with Jamie and Everett and boy were they a hoot.

My friends were sitting with the couple at the large booth, and they must have told that joke 100 times the next day at Franksgiving dinner. Every time they reenacted the scene, it was funnier than before.

“D!ck! ... She said, You can SUCK MY D!CK!!!”

“Turn up your ears, Everett!!!”

Warning! This post contains:

• one (1) Death Star laser, repurposed for boiling water

• skyscrapers full of strawberries

• unregulated levels of hope

Side effects may include believing in the future. Reader discretion is advised.

Some call humans a failed experiment waiting to be annihilated from pollution, climate or robots. It’s a mindset that denies our potential while also planting seeds of apathy and despair. We’ve heard it for decades, but have always innovated our way out of the “impending” doom.

A few major problems today contributing to doom culture center around energy, global warming and deforestation. Of course, declining trees contribute to warming, so it’s a vicious cycle. I believe, however, that the latest energy and agricultural tech could eliminate these problems within 30 years.

First, I need to ask a favor. I’m going to ask that you dream with me. Pessimists can pess off. Kidding of course.

Agriculture takes up half of the planet’s habitable surface and requires a web of habitat-destroying cement jungles (e.g. roads, cities, storage facilities). This piece will introduce you to vertical farming, a new industry speculators believe will replace horizontal farming in the future. This leap forward would lead to massive reforestation efforts that offset earth’s carbon imbalance.

Science Fiction turned Reality

It may sound like a pipe dream, but if you’re following the tech, then you’re already aware of the science fiction that becomes reality every day.

Nanotechnologies already exist that deliver medicine intravenously, dispose of tumors, clear clogged arteries, and stop internal bleeding. AI can now translate silent human brain activity, and tell bionic arms to act upon it. Robots can “talk” to crops now. Basically, plants tell robots, “I’m thirsty,” by releasing a chemical into the soil that underground sensors recognize. The robots then supply water until the plant releases another hormone that says, “I’m good.” This means, no more watering on a cadence. Water is delivered right to the root, which saves 40% of the water normally lost to evaporation. Subsequently …

Plants are growing 2 to 3X larger and sucking up 2 to 3X more carbon.

A team of researchers from Cornell recently discovered that plants absorb 37 billion more metric tons of carbon per year than what was previously thought. Every tree you plant is absorbing 31% more carbon than what the outdated models predicted. This suggests that we’ve been using outdated data to make global warming models since the 1980s.

Fission’s “Death Star” Laser

I read stories like this every day and can’t help but think that we’re close. Science is growing at exponential rates. Recently, physicists were researching fission, but inadvertently invented a giant “laser” (e.g. millimeter waves) that could provide endless green energy via something entirely different: geothermal (i.e. heat energy from the earth). The engineers at Quaise Energy plan to repurpose this giant leap forward for mankind. More about that later, but just know …

The biggest technical revolution of the 21st century isn’t AI or crypto – it’s boiling water.

The global economy runs on power – and for the first time, we’ve figured out how to extract it without drilling ourselves into oblivion.

No wind and solar deserts that devastate bird populations. Just Earth, doing what it’s always done.

Iceland’s been running on geothermal for decades, and their GDP per capita outpaces most fossil-rich nations. No oil. Just heat.

A geothermal revolution

Now, three breakthroughs are turning their model into a global blueprint.

1. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)
Born from ex–oil engineers, Furvo Energy uses EGS, the same pinpoint drilling tech – but instead of pulling up oil and gas, it harnesses heat. Water down. Hypercritical (high-temp) water up. No carbon. No combustion. The turbines turn just the same.

2. Geopressure
Sage Geosystems built a giant underground espresso machine that pumps water deep into porous rock. The Earth heats it, pressure builds and energy is released and used on-demand or the pressure is stored for later use. No lithium. The “battery” *is* the Earth’s crust.

3. Millimeter Waves
By a company called Quaise. Part microwave, part Death Star superlaser. No metal claws. No fractures. Just smooth, sci-fi drilling that strengthens rock as it melts into itself, which solves geothermal’s biggest demon: earthquakes.

One fission laser costs $500K to manufacture vs. $30MM for a mechanical drill. And instead of 20 years to dig 20 km down, developers are estimating that it’ll take several months.

Worried about fracking? Don’t be. The laser doesn’t fracture bedrock like current drill bits do. Instead it melts inward, keeping the rock much stronger and sealed up.

Of course, Big Oil and Coal interests are keeping a very close eye on geothermal. They’ll eventually retrofit all their existing coal and gas powered plants since the infrastructure is already there. This will cut timelines in half. Quaise Energy’s first commercial plant is breaking ground in 2026.

So it doesn’t kill birds, minimal geological impact, endless clean energy.

Together, these systems are rewriting the economics of energy – not someday – right now in Houston Texas, where power plants are already built and ... blossoming? Yes. That’s the perfect word for such a plant.

And when it scales, they’ll do what no corrupt politician ever could – make us less reliant on corrupt politicians. Make us less reliant on the Epsteins of the world.

Imagine heating your home for less than your Netflix subscription.

Give it three years and Big Oil will have to pivot. Give it ten, and it’ll make the internet look like dial-up. AI is already being tapped to find the most ideal locations to drill because …

AI’s massive energy suck will be increasingly reliant on the endless geothermal supply.

It’s why AI companies like Google and Microsoft already have plans to build their own geothermal plants. Contracts are signed. It’s happening.

This isn’t utopia – it’s thermodynamics. Endless clean energy will absolutely make it easier to live, and for developing countries to become what Iceland is today.

Ag-tech revolution, reforestation and plummeting costs

As for the agriculture problem, enter skyscraper farms. Currently, agriculture takes up roughly 46.74 billion acres of land, but that area could be reduced to a small fraction if we grew food vertically.

Supposedly, the entire earth’s population can fit into Texas if they were all families of four living on a 1/4 acre (basically the density of New York City). That’s definitely not practical, but each individual in the world could have 1/4 acre of land if spread out over the contiguous United States. Again, not possible, but it gives us an idea of the actual dimensions required for human living space. Under this scenario, people will live all over the world but vertical farms will lead to people living in smaller clusters, centered around bigger cities.

Shipping costs will disappear when vertical farms move inside city limits. The farm could even double as your grocery store. If customers pick their own strawberries, they’ll save even more. Imagine how fresh food will taste if you pick it off the vine. Currently, strawberries are picked green and ripen in an 18-wheeler. The only fruit that’s picked when ripe is frozen food. This all changes with vertical farming.

Lastly, competition will drive costs as low as they can go. All the Walmarts of the world will pass savings off to people, forcing competitors to do the same.

So why aren’t we doing this now?

The expensive energy required to power grow lights is the tallest hurdle, but the endless geothermal energy of the future will significantly cut energy costs and make lighting economically viable. Even if geothermal doesn’t win the energy war, micro nuclear power plants using thorium (salt) reactors will slash energy costs in the future just the same.

Whether it’s geothermal, thorium, solar, wind or fission, the point is the same: when energy becomes abundant and cheap, stability follows — and stability is our prerequisite for peace, innovation, and hope.

Both energy and ag-tech industries are about to take off. It’s just a matter of time before vertical farms eliminate the need for flat forest-destroying farms.

With all this in mind, I don’t believe it will take a full societal collapse to renew our human experiment. There’s too much money to be made from clean energy and skyscraper farming.

The flip side to greed is that if you can make money saving the planet, then entrepreneurs will come out of the woodwork to do it.

I believe these ideas are war-ending, inflation-killing. When our cost of living for energy and food is cut in half, when people can live more comfortably, the rest of the world’s problems become smaller. What will there be left to fight over when we aren’t fighting so hard to survive?

If the elite don’t blow us up, then it’s going to be bright. Our energy will be bright as yellow … so have hope!

No — literally, you can have it. I’m giving it away. Have as much as you like.

I recently finished a 5-year project curating all the good news in the world (and Far Side cartoons). It’s all the other tech, medical and energy breakthroughs that will save us.

In dark times, I hope it shines a light ˗ˏˋ★ˎˊ˗

• one (1) statistically significant bitch face

• a turtle head (non-fecal), and

• mutual longing for boobs (peer-reviewed).

Reader discretion is advised. So is biting a pencil sideways.

I haven’t been charged for alcohol on Southwest Airlines for my last four flights. I’ve only asked for one drink each time, so maybe the first drink is on the house. Is that a thing? I always get the cheap tickets, so it’s not a business perk. Idk, but let’s see what happens.

I’m on a flight to Arizona now. I just gave the flight attendant a big dumb toothy smile, and immediately felt gross. Was it genuine, or was I just trying to keep my free-drink streak alive? It’s a real conundrum. I feel phony, but four free drinks could be coincidence. Five’s clickbait. Five free drinks is a solid Substack hack — a wet dream for any aggressively mediocre life coach out there.

The behavioral science

It reminds me of a behavioral science experiment by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. He proved you could fake it ‘til you make it.

Each participant was asked to fill out a survey ... with a pencil in their mouth. It’s a weird catch, but the researchers were brilliant. One group had to bite down on the middle of a pencil turned sideways. The other group had to turn the pencil away from their face and bite down on the very end.

Results revealed that the “middle” group answered the survey more positively. But why? They were the same questions.

Turns out, it’s because the “middle” group was unwittingly forced to “smile!” Try it out. Turn a pencil sideways and bite down. Whether you like it or not, you’re smiling like a little bitch now 😁 … go on, look in the mirror. You look ridiculous.

Researchers found that when smile muscles are engaged, the brain releases endorphins that make you happy, even when you don’t know you’re smiling and there’s nothing to be beaming about.

The “end” group was just as fascinating. Those sad sacks were forced to purse their lips, engaging all the frown muscles as they bit down on the eraser. Their responses had a statistically significant correlation to their bitch face.

Behavioral scientists also discovered that when somebody smiles at you, even if you don’t smile back, the muscles in your face responsible for turning frowns upside down will automatically be primed — ready to go basically. Unless, of course, you’re the 1-in-20 psychopath who doesn’t like … I don’t know, babies in bubble wrap. That’s not a thing, but hang with me. It’s just a thought experiment. Even if you hate babies, surely you’d poke a few to pop the bubble wrap.

I digress — back to the science. The nerds went on to prove that even external smiles caused participants to answer questions more positively.

Even if your smile muscles are just barely triggered, your brain takes a shortcut and starts pumping out good vibes like, “Wahoooooo! Wayne’s World! Party time! Excellent!”

So, back to the million-dollar question.

Was my smile fake?

Abso-fucking-lutely! ... not. Yes and no. It started off a bit fake. I was wishfully thinking at first, but here’s what’s up:

The very act of smiling was already hacking my brain — and everyone else’s — creating a domino effect as the flight attendant’s smile spread down the aisle. I basically launched a smile grenade that primed the whole plane with joy juice.

The lady looked tired. She had been on her feet all day, so when I gave her a small gesture of gratitude, she reciprocated. Her smile was big and biologically persuasive, which genuinely made me happy. We shared a moment.

And once that free Hornito’s Margarita touched my lips, I was smiling ear to ear. Juices were flowing. My jams were bangin’.

A red-headed baby was crying

He was looking my way as he stood on Momma’s lap. Looked like he wanted a boob. Any boob — left or right — didn’t matter. When we locked eyes, we immediately connected over our mutual longing for boobs.

I turned my tongue into a hot dog and poked it out a little, like a turtle head peaking out to see if the coast is clear. Little Dude scrunched his nose up, and we had a laugh. He forgot about the tears streaming down his face, then plopped down on his Momma’s lap and got to business suckin’ them titties.

Lucky guy.

Turtle head 🐢

It was my first nickname. When I was a baby, I had a big hoodie, so when I had enough of all the hoopla, I’d retreat back into my “shell.”

I’d usually max out my people quota by late morning, right after my brunch boob. Occasionally, I’d stick my little turtle head out, and if the world was still people-ing, I’d go right back in.

You can call me Turtle Head if you want, but you have to think of me fondly and not about noncommittal unpinchable poops.

Say it ten times fast.

“Noncommittal unpinchaple…

STOP! It was rhetorical. Don’t take me so seriously.

That was a bit of a non sequitur, but to bring it back, overtime I learned to stick my neck out and connect with the other turtles on Turtle Island.

Give yourself a smile. Then give it to someone else. Doesn’t matter if you have to force it. A little smile, even if you’re not really feeling it, can make someone’s day. That person will likely reciprocate love or laughter — a reaction that makes you feel something real. At this point, nobody’s pretending.

Jiffy Lube Love ❤️

I tried it out the other day on the young lady at Jiffy Lube. As I walked up to pay, she rejoiced, “You’re my last customer!” to which I replied, “Congratulations!!! Booyeah!”

Just making it through another day can sometimes take everything you have.

“Do those guys in the garage give you a hard time?”

“Yeah. It’s the guy ...”

She turned to see if she could see Douche Bag through the door window.

“I know who you’re talking about. I heard his tone. I’m sorry.”

As she punched a few buttons on the keyboard, I saw my $145-dollar bill magically drop down to $66 dollars. Not only did she give me the 50% employee discount but…

“I think we have another 5% deal this week that I can tack on.”

Booyakasha!

Back to the present. I saw the flight attendant collecting payments, but as she passed by, the lady didn’t give me her little terminal. She gave me a big dumb toothy smile.

The plane landed with my five-free-drink streak intact, ready to emotionally manipulate and clickbait a bunch of Substackers into smiling. I should really write a self-help book.

Am I lucky? Nah. You get what you ask for. You get lucky.

My lady knows what it means when I’m smiling at her.

I was a red-headed baby once 👶

I’ll leave you with India Arie.

“It doesn’t cost a thing to smile.

You don’t have to pay to laugh.”

There’s hope!

• animals of varying equality

• one (1) synchronized asshole clench, and

• Officer Fuck Face

Reader discretion is advised. So is a Master Mason on speed dial.

I was performing at a birthday party. A bunch of my songwriter friends were smoking bud, having a good time, until a cop walked through the door.

The tension was so thick, you could cut it with our clenched assholes…

… until the host walked into the room with an ounce of weed protruding from his front shirt pocket.

“Hey Jim! Glad you could make it.”

“Hey Mike. I’m not staying long. It’s a bit too ... flowery.”

Our assholes unclenched. The cop was cool. Not a big fan of flowers, which is weird, but whatever. We weren’t going to jail, so fuck a bunch of flowers ... what with their thorny thorns and their ... sticky nectar.

After the show, I was driving my friends Buzz and Brandywine home, but shortly before we crossed over the Ashland City limit, we heard sirens catching up to us. We were way out in the country, just before the speed limit switched to 55 mph — clearly a speed trap.

Of course, this cop was the opposite of cool. Didn’t believe a word we said. Tried to trip us up on our story, catch us in a “lie.” It didn’t help that I left my wallet at home, and Brandywine, the car owner, left her purse at the party. Total fuck-ups. ID-less, driving 25 mph over the limit, reeking of ... flowers.

Then his walkie-talkie went off.

“Unit 367”

“Go ahead.”

“367 we’ve got the Sheriff ...”

The dispatch trailed off as Officer Fuck Face walked away. We were screwed. We could faintly hear muffled voices requesting backup, calling in the drug-sniffing dogs. The Sheriff was involved, so we were all catastrophizing.

“God … bless America!”

Then the cop came back just as quick as he left and said, “I’m going to give you a warning. Y’all be safe. Goodnight!” and was gone.

“What the fuck?” We all jinxed each other. Who knows what it was, but we skedaddled, lest our luck run out.

The next day, my friend Cass called and said that she drove by us on her way home from the party. So she called Mike. Mike called the Sheriff. The Sheriff called our cop off, and just like that, it never happened.

What flowers? I don’t smell any flowers. Fuck a bunch of flowers.

Turns out, Mike was a Master Mason.

Governor calls him Gov ... kinda thing.

I have a feeling the next time won’t go so well.

This was the precise moment I realized …

• that justice was a sham,

• that the entire world works this way,

• that some animals are more equal than others.

Side note

Someone accused me of plagiarism – said, “I can't quite put my finger on it.”

It’s hilarious, but to be clear, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," is the most famous line in George Orwell's 1945 satirical novel Animal Farm. Let us marvel at the pop culture icons I “stole” here.

1. The March of Progress with piggies pays homage to

2. Animal Farm, which pays homage to

3. The Ministry of Silly Walks with

4. John Cleese, who represents peak evolution — more equal than any other animal.

For the record, let’s not call it stealing. “Paying homage” sounds more civilized for evolved silly walkers.

Note: I’ve researched the topic extensively, studied under fasting experts, and fasted with them for weeks at a time, but I am not a medical expert. Please consult your doctor about any changes to your diet.

Warning! The end of this post contains:

• butt stuff (medically supervised)

• one (1) ten-pound turd, verified by bathroom scale, and

• crap vacs, flying off shelves

Reader discretion is advised. So is a bathroom scale.

Melina had been nagging for years, so I finally caved and went to the stupid retreat. I did it to appease my wife, but I left that cabin without any inflammation or pain around my bulging C-5 disc.

For some, it’s about getting into a state of ketosis and losing weight. For others, it’s a spiritual thing. One lady at our retreat canceled a major surgery because it cured her back pain. Some researchers estimate that up to 80% of all major human diseases are mediated by inflammation. It’s amazing how simple it is to treat, but most people want a pill. They want something easy. Because doctors are always right ... right?

Trust Big Pharma. OBEY.

Or OPEN your mind.

Why fasting?

Fiber is great, but when you strip it from fruits and veggies, the juice is MUCH easier to digest. The energy usually devoted to digestion is used to speed up an incredibly powerful detox called autophagy. The detox simply flushes dead cells out and generates new ones.

Juice (minus fiber and especially from the peel) contains highly concentrated doses of macro and micronutrients that you’d never get in a normal diet. And this high concentration of “medicine” gives you countless benefits.

For all my guys:

Y’all need to dissociate the word “juice” from:

• hot goat yoga

• fermented tofu sprouts

• spiced pea-milk lattes

• hipster soul patches

… or whatever stereotype you avoid to feel tough. Hating juice doesn’t make you more masculine. It just makes you thirsty … and wrong.

Truth: Fasting is masculine

Hunter-gatherers fasted ALL the time. Not because they wanted to, but because they had to. We didn’t always have a hog on the smoker. Kroger’s and freezers weren’t always a thing.

When hunters went hungry, it actually gave them super manly-man powers. Evolution rewarded hunger with increased focus so our arrows would fly straight and true, so we could hit the hog and see another day. Survival. Maybe we should occasionally tap into the things we evolved into and practiced for hundreds of thousands of years.

Dr. Valter Longo is the man. As the Director of The Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, Longo has conducted the longest clinical research on fasting. Longo has spent 35+ years studying the following benefits of autophagy:

Fasting increases focus

Autophagy increases Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), i.e. miracle grow for your brain. If you take a brain out of the skull for science and squirt it with BDNF proteins, the brain will literally grow in size. The reason it can’t grow inside our head is because … we have a skull.

I had more mental clarity and focus than ever on days two to six of my juice fast. I stopped on day seven, not because I was hungry or loopy, but because the pain and inflammation in my neck was gone. It felt like discovering magic. Since then, I’ve fasted a few times whenever the pain comes back. I just listen to my body and give it the answer it seeks.

Fasting is also highly effective in treating

• High cholesterol, blood pressure, heart disease

• IBS, Crohn’s, diverticulitis, acid reflux, GERD

• Pancreatitis, gallstones, kidney stones

• Asthma, sinusitis

• Aggressive mutating cancers (before systemic spread)

All of this has been clinically studied in the lab. In fact, the U.S. government has done the best research (double-blind, placebo-controlled). It costs billions to do longitudinal (decades-long) studies, but it’s all mostly buried in the Library of Congress. Big Pharma won’t promote it because their stakeholders say it’s bad for business. I love the free market, but that’s crapitalism for ya.

Longo both exposes and validates Uncle Sam’s research. In fact, he may be the first doctor (with 50K others to back him up) to get the FDA to approve food and fasting as prescribed medicine.

Juice fasting or the Fast Mimicking Diet (FMD) is by far the best fast. It’s “mimicking” because it mimics traditional fasts. A water fast is dangerous ’cuz it kills your energy, but FMDs give you the glucose and protein levels you need to function during the day.

As I mentioned, my focus went through the roof. By day two, both hunger and brain fog subsided. The timing is different for everyone, but do your research. Find out what works for you.

Juice to veggie ratios and recipes

Breakfast and lunch should be 70/30 fruit to veggie juice. There are a million recipes a Google away, but here’s a simple recipe that works wonders.

Green juice for inflammation

• 3 large handfuls of kale

• 2 stalks of celery

• Fresh mint & ginger (to taste)

• 1 cucumber

• 1 apple

• 1/2 lemon

Dinner is the reverse — 30/70 veggie to fruit — more of a veggie soup. You can buy veggie broth at any grocery store to make it easy.

The video podcast at the bottom explains the science behind it all. I watched 30+ videos to find the best interview and info, so please take the time to watch. It’s incredibly enlightening. The science behind it is already saving lives and could save yours one day. It takes some willpower, but do it for yourself and for those you love.

The interviewer asked Valter to pitch his FMD product, but he was like, “Nah.” Longo’s more about the science than making money. And he doesn’t try to convert anyone to be vegan or vegetarian. He recommends cutting the typical American’s meat consumption in half to mirror the same diet that we evolved into for 100’s of thousands of years.

Essentially, we’re full of acid because that’s what it takes to break down the large portions of meat we eat. Just reduce your intake, and it’ll pay dividends.

I don’t recommend Longo’s FMD product ‘cuz I’m a frugal bastard, but the benefit of Prolon is that you don’t have to buy a juicer, worry about recipes and clean up a big mess. For some, that’s a big deal. Prolon also includes soup, nut bars and snacks for people who need something more substantial in their bellies.

How long do you fast?

It depends. For me, it took about five days for my inflammation to die down. You stop when your issue is fixed or your body tells you, “Enough already. Where’s the beef?” If you’re healthy and just looking to increase longevity, Longo recommends one three- to five-day fast per year, which is a pretty low commitment.

One short fast gave mice an 11% longer lifespan, plus substantial gains in cognitive performance, immune function, reversing aging markers and age-related diseases like tumors.

If you have cancer or something serious, 2 to 4-week fasts are recommended with the help of a physician.

Edward Norton narrates a great film called Fasting and the Longevity Revolution to get you inspired and jumpstart learning. If you’re looking for a program, Longo’s Create Cures Foundation provides nutritional consultation for people who can’t afford expensive cancer treatments or for those who want to augment traditional therapies. If you don’t have cancer, Prolon has consultative services and programs for everyone.

I learned everything at PRAMA. If you live anywhere near Asheville, NC, the retreat is pretty incredible, rustic, affordable. The yoga and massage were second to none. The staff was awesome. Juices and soups were delicious.

By the way, I don’t make anything from these links. It’s just my way of giving back. I like the idea of my friends and family living without pain. That’s it.

I ended up being a “disciple” for juice fasting for about a year, but my enthusiasm quickly faded. I found that most people won’t accept that something as simple as juice or fasting can heal most ailments. It’s too woo-woo for the masses, so I stopped “preaching” and started asking questions. Occasionally, I’ll meet open-minded people who are curious and disciplined enough to put in the work and turn questions into answers.

And now for something completely different

More clinical research waits at the bottom, but you've earned a treat. I made you drink 1,500 words of kale, so dessert is on me.

Butt stuff

The final part of our retreat included an enema to flush out all the toxins from our detox. Never in a million years would I have agreed to do an enema, but they’re really not so bad — incredibly beneficial for your health. At first, I didn’t think it was working. I didn’t feel anything. So I looked up at the bag hanging on the door, and sure enough, the skin-temperature water was draining fast — all the way down the tube and right into me. So I casually said to my wife:

“Well how about that? Looks like something’s going up my butt after all.”

Hopefully, that’s the last time I’ll say that particular phrase out loud. Next time, I’ll be more certain of what’s going up my butt.

The ten-pounder

One rather large lady approached Ramesh, the leader of our retreat, and told him it wasn’t working. Nothing happened. Ramesh calmly told her to try the enema one more time. She came back later — same deal, no dice. “Give it one more try,” he said reassuringly. She didn’t come back. Instead, she went to Walmart to get a few more enema kits, where she legit converted two ladies in line after they overheard her telling the cashier:

“It took three tries using these kits, but finally I dropped a ten-pound turd.”

Apparently, she weighed herself afterwards and was serious. You can’t make that shit up. Or you wouldn’t want to at least. Who drops a ten-pounder and then tells random strangers at the grocery? But there she was, shouting from the rooftops for all to hear. She told Ramesh the whole story when she got back — said that everyone in the checkout line believed her, because in her words:

“Those two old ladies almost tripped over each other as they ran off to get their crap vacs.”

My favorite podcast with Valter Longo

Clinical research

Clinical trials led by Dr. Valter Longo at USC show that the Fasting-Mimicking Diet (FMD) — a 5-day plant-based, low-calorie regimen — reduces biological age by an average of 2.5 years, lowers metabolic risk factors (cholesterol, blood pressure, visceral fat), and aids in immune system rejuvenation by promoting cellular repair. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Key findings from FMD trials include:

• Biological Age Reduction: Three to four monthly cycles of the 5-day FMD resulted in lower blood pressure, reduced liver fat, and an average 2.5-year decrease in biological age.

• Cancer and Chemotherapy Support: Studies indicate FMD can make cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy while protecting healthy cells, with potential, to increase survival rates in breast cancer when used alongside treatment.

• Immune System Reboot: The, cycles trigger the destruction of old white blood cells and the creation of new ones, effectively acting as an “immune reboot”.

• Disease Prevention: Clinical evidence suggests FMD may reverse, or prevent, diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease by lowering risk factors.

• Ongoing Research: Large-scale trials are currently investigating the long-term, effects of FMD combined with the “Longevity Diet” on fat mass and overall health. [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

Sources

[1] Valter Longo’s FMD Program & Diet

[2] Create Cures Foundation webinar with Valter Longo: Advancing Healthspan and Longevity

[3] The Rich Roll Podcast with Valter Longo: What if fasting could help the body regenerate itself?

[4] USC article: Fasting-Like Diet Lowers Risk Factors for Disease, Reduces Biological Age in Humans

[5] National Library of Medicine: Fasting-mimicking Diet and Longevity Diet, Body Composition and Aging

[6] Diabetes Prevention and Potential Reversal

[7] Book Review: The Longevity Diet

[8] Valter Longo website: Cancer research

[9] USC article: Eat less, live longer? The science of fasting and longevity

Hello Love. How was the show?
It flashes by so fast
Don’t worry you’re only mostly dead
But you almost died the cast

Now listen closely. There’s only minutes
To choose your pathway
Wake up, go back to earth
Or stay here and play

What dreams may come? It’s up to you
You are what you imagine
Today, I’m Gene Kelly
And you’re Falcor the dragon

I can see you think I’m blowing smoke
So darlin’ I must confess
You’ve a birthmark in your right ear
And one under your dress

Don’t worry baby. I ain’t stalkin’
Angels know everything
And since the first dawn
You’re the sweetest thing I’ve seen

Remember when that limb snapped
In your sweet ol’ Gumtree
Ever wonder how you landed
ever so softly

Sometimes I think you knew
I was there all along
You’d reach out to touch
Or sing me a song

Well of course there’s a hell
It’s all in your head
Those who don’t forgive themselves
Die before their dead

No, there isn’t a God.
There’s too many to know
Breeding like rabbits
Always in meetings, making space grow

It’s a NeverEnding Story
A reincar … nival ride
Where nothing’s left behind
We’re all electrified

Dust to dust, we disappear
Just to light back up
I’ve tried every door
But it’s love that fills my cup
It’s love that fills me up

So make love for heaven’s sake
Make love for heaven’s sake

[Heard off camera]
But I can’t do Falcor. You gotta switch back.

”Dream a dream – and what you see will be”

Warning! This post contains:

• Beastie Boys lyrics, cited academically

• one (1) acid tab, split three ways per picnic bylaws

• arboreal romance (consensual)

• a flying squirrel impression, 6,950 feet above sea level, and

• unexplained sap (locations classified)

Reader discretion is advised. So is industrial-grade soap.

Shasta. It’s a river, a language, a tribe. It’s a place that adventurers and travelers who have seen it all call home.

Shhhastaaaa. I like to say it. The last time the active volcano said anything explosive was in 1786, but the people of Mount Shasta blew up when Nestlé tried to move in and tap her headwaters for bottled water. They ran ‘em out of town and kept their water pure.

Shasta is a way of life.

Not that the people are opposed to honest industry. They’re home to Shasta, the 125-year-old value-priced soft drink. And just like the people, their brand is unique, with offerings like Grapefruit Zazz, Tiki Orange Mango, Bubble Gum, and Candy Cane Cola. Their pop is still popular today and best enjoyed while listening to ’80s New Wave synth-pop.

Any Ministry fans? Al Jourgensen wrote Shasta’s jingle.

If you’re still not convinced of Shasta’s superlative soda, just ask The Beastie Boys. They’ll tell you.

“I’m the master blaster,
drinking up the Shasta,
my voice sounds sweet
cause it hastaaaaa.”

Taking it back to 1992, that’s “Professor Booty” from the album Check Your Head.

So what’s the point of all the trivia? Where do we go now? Or, a more interesting question:

Where did we come from?

Mount Shasta is the place where I entered the motherfucking universe. I was born 3,600 feet above sea level on the flanks of a volcano.

I don’t remember anything from my childhood in northern California, but our family photo album was vivid enough. One of my favorite faded old photographs is of my family wearing bathing suits in the snow. At higher elevations, blizzards at night, then 70 degree weather the next day was not uncommon.

There aren’t any snowmen on Mt. Shasta, but you’ll find a few snowdudes. Olaf has a summer home on the South side.

Surely this magical mountain had an effect on my love for nature and for getting lost … on purpose. At 41 years old, I’m still climbing trees. I remember wearing dress shoes and a cummerbund, but that didn’t stop me. If I see a tree with some nice knobs and thick branches, it’s on.

You might see me if I let you. You might hear an owl and say to yourself, “I thought owls sleep during the day?” Then you’ll look up and be like, “What the fuck dude? Everyone’s waiting. Aren’t you the best man?” All this is perfectly normal in my world. And my hoot is dead on.

When I was a kid, my friend Jake taught me how to use my hands to “whistle like the Indians,” but I perfected the technique. Basically you cup your hands together and blow straight down into a little hole you make between your thumbs. To get the owl’s purring sound just right, you exhale and gargle simultaneously. Fluctuating the pitch is just like playing a trombone. Just slide a few fingers up and down to get the right sound. That’s it! That’s how I roll.

I do a lotta stuff in trees, which brings us to the title of the story. It’s not a metaphor.

This is an account of how to make love to a tree, properly, 6,950 ft above sea level. Most trees won’t turn you down, so it’s a much easier way to join the Mile High Club.

Before my big adventure, my last glimpse of Shasta was from my cradle. Twenty years later, I decided to go on a pilgrimage to my place of origin. I planned the trip with my faerie friend, Meaghan Owens. She was a fellow songwriter and adventurer who I was secretly in love with. Everyone who meets Meaghan falls in love, so it’s not a big secret.

Anyways, back in Nashville, I told Meaghan that I was planning to move to California in a few months to start a music publishing company. She was like, “Oh that’s cool. I’ll be in Mt. Shasta around then.”

Me: “No way. That’s where I was born!”
Meaghan: “Really?
Me: “Yeah, I’ll be in Oakland for a bit, but I was planning to make my way up to Shasta at some point.”
Meaghan: “You should come visit!”

Meaghan was going to Shasta to visit Lucy, the mother of her late friend Sequoya. Lucy’s son Shannon lived in San Francisco. I hadn’t met him before, but Meaghan said we’d be best friends. Since my sister Willow lived in Oakland, I decided to fly out and see them both. After a quick visit with Willow, Shannon and I took off in his beater car and headed north.

My friend Sharon also lived nearby, but she can be a little flaky, so I gave her barely enough time to pack, but not enough time to think about the consequences of a big decision. It worked, so Shannon (dude) and Sharon (dudette) joined forces and we took off.

According to Oatmeal Muncher University, Shasta is Earth’s root chakra, “the access point to ‘All That Is,’ a place where you are bathed in knowingness and nurtured by the realization and frequency of oneness.”

All that sounds a little too woo-woo for me, but “Wah-hoooo!” We were on a road trip!

One flat tire and a lotta laughs later, we arrived. It must have been around midnight, but Meaghan was there to welcome us as soon as we stepped out of the car.

I remember seeing every star in the sky. The Milky Way was so vivid that it looked like a cirrus cloud stretching from one horizon to the other. As I gave Meaghan a big bear hug, lifting her up off my mountain, a shooting star streaked across the sky over her shoulder. The girl was an omen magnet.

The next day, we all headed up to Bunny Flat, 6,950 feet up the south side of the mountain. As soon as we hit the trail head, we all went silent. Everything was covered in snow, glittering in sunbeams shining through evergreens. One ray of light illuminated a little old man, bald with fluffy white sideburns. He had a burlap bag in one hand and was sprinkling seeds with the other. Two white butterflies fluttered around him.

“Did someone spike my oatmeal?” I wondered. “Is this happening?” Then he looked me in the eyes and said, “Would you like to help?”

I couldn’t even process all the data streaming in, but I knew the right answer was “YES!”

All my existential dilemmas vanished. Spreading beauty across the earth is exactly what I wanted to do with my life. We lost track of time sprinkling wildflower seeds, wandering through the woods until we had essentially become the butterfly effect and our hunger pangs had long given up trying to remind us of lunch.

At last we group-hugged with the old man and took off to search for the perfect place in the snow to spread our picnic blanket. The faded family photograph that had captured my childish curiosity was no longer a dream.

It was at this point that Sharon decided to announce, “Oh, by the way, my boyfriend goes to these, like, mind-expansion conferences in Switzerland, so he knows some of the scientists who attend. It’s probably not going to work out between us because he’s, like, this weird idiot savant. It’s a tough decision though, because he always has good shit. […] One Smiley Face for you. Who wants the posh monkey? We can split the Jesus Lizard down the middle if you want.”

For the next six hours, words and laughter became one and the same.

We feasted on purple scones with blackberry jam and cream. We had crispy cheese ’n onion hogbake, trifles, candied chestnuts, rhubarb pie with apple snow. Of course we washed it down with Shasta’s own Summer Strawberry Fizz. I might have made up the apple snow bit, but my friends looked like woodland critters at the time, so let’s just say it was hard to distinguish between real and Redwall.

After we had our fill, Shannon and I took off on our own adventure, running as fast as we could up the steep slope. Next, I remember lying flat on my back on a fallen tree, trying and failing to catch my breath. Capturing ephemeral mist is much harder than it looks, so I decided to let it be, and gaze through the icy smoke, focusing intently on the neon green moss growing on the limbs above. As I moved my head out of a shadow into the sunlight, I closed my eyes, whereupon the entire forest remained clear and colorful, only imprinted under my eyelids. To this day, I can still see these impressions. Whenever I need clarity or wisdom, my dreams will take me back to the exact spot, to my Castanadian place of power.

When I opened my eyes, I spotted a clearing off to my right through the woods about 100 feet away. The expanse was uninhabited except for one lone evergreen tree in the middle. She was beautiful, but had a little imperfection: an offshoot limb growing sideways from her base. I didn’t mind. She was a tall, skinny young thing and I was gonna mount her. I mean, I was going to ask if I could climb into her limbs first.

I walked over and sat on the offshoot, which made for a nice bench – strong, yet flexible. As I bounced, I wasn’t sure if an idea was growing in my mind or if my mind was growing on the idea. In any case, we grew on each other until I jumped up off the branch and ran a bit further up the mountain. After a big exhale, my breath disappeared and I took off again, this time barreling down the slope. As I approached the tree, I crouched low and leaped onto the limb, springing off with all my might, then flying seven or eight feet through the air, and screaming from the shock of it all. Shannon had to help dig me out of the snow hole that I made from the impact.

I perfected my flying squirrel impression for what felt like half a day (in LSD time). In reality though, we were Greenwich mean minus eight, sooooo … give or take a few lunar seconds it was probably about … five minutes.

I was doing flips and twists and triple Salchows. It didn’t matter if I landed on my feet or my hands or my head. There was sooooo much snow to soften the blow.

Finally, when I was too tired to go on, I jumped into the evergreen and gave my new lady friend a big bear hug. She seemed to like that, so I disappeared into her branches as I whispered all the things that I wanted to do to her. I won’t say what she whispered back, but it was nasty.

A few moments later, Shannon saw me pop up out at the very top, 30 feet up. He immediately sprang to his feet and yelled for me to get down. I politely hollered, “No way!” It was a convincing argument, apparently, because he shook his head and sat back down. If I plummeted to death, at least he could say that he tried.

At that height I could see all the way down the mountain. Off to the North, neon balls of light kept streaking by. I thought I was hallucinating. Shannon told me later that they were just skiers in bright colored jackets.

I could see my breath engulfing the tiny cones at the top of my tree. Most evergreens have cones that hang down, but hers curved upward, a trait unique to Shasta’s California Fir. The baby cones at the top were so soft, like velvet to the touch.

We were swaying effortlessly. Next thing you know, I was rocking back and forth to the natural rhythm and sound of the wind. Before long we were careening three feet this way, five feet that way, then six, seven, eight feet in either direction.

Shannon yelled, “Darby, be careful!” but I was carefree, riding that tree like a composer orchestrating the earth as I hurled its weight in each direction. In that moment we became one – literally, one giant pendulum of a metronome, having the time of our lives.

I was 30 feet high, screaming like a banshee at my shadow, “Try and catch me now!” But she couldn’t keep up with our tempo.

“[sobbing] Oh my god! Full on double mountain across the sky! What does it mean?!” I sounded like Bear, the double rainbow dude from Yosemite.

I don’t know if the universe gave Bear an answer, but what I think the double rainbow means is that life is beautiful, and you have to be present or you might miss it.

“Booyakashaaaaa!!!”

It’s an Irish saying that means high glory and love to the very moment. I usually reserve the exclamation for winning game point in badminton, but I literally felt like the birdie floating to and fro, so it was totally called for.

I can imagine the skiers doing a double-take and skidding to a hockey stop to gawk. Obviously, some of it was performance on my part. There’s a certain thrill you get when you know people are watching and boy were there some bright flashing lights watching me get it on that day.

I remember the thick musky smell of her sap, the way it felt smeared all over my face. I didn’t wash her off for days. Or, wait … actually, it wouldn’t wash off. I tried, but it was too sticky for consumer-grade soap. It doesn’t matter. The consummation of love should be sticky.

The level of love we made that day has surely ruined me. “Oh my God,” I thought. “Please don’t end. Please …” But it was time. I made the choice, laid back and fell. I didn’t think about it, just instinctively knew that it was possible because my mind had previously stored crucial data, namely that my young California Fir’s green branches were supple enough to bend but not break. I don’t remember recalling this construct explicitly. The knowledge was simply encoded into my subconscious, as if the physics of the fall was part of me.

Each branch was a little longer than the branch above, so they all “caught” me before delivering me to the branch below until I rolled off the tree into a big pillow of snow. I laid there and stared in wonder, strangely craving a cigarette. I didn’t even smoke, but the urge seemed normal.

It was a dream. It happened. Shannon nearly shat his pants and told everyone when we got back. Then he told everyone again the next day – when I could finally distinguish words from sound effects. He’s probably still telling that story.

Warning! This post contains:

• plosives, deployed at point-blank range

• codswallop, catawampus, and other legal expletives

• certified twaddle

• the brown Mary Poppins

• one (1) white peacock’s premium ass, and

• a full pardon for every Karen in America.

Reader discretion is advised. Bryan can fuck off.

“I think Karens are caring. It’s not fair to paint them with a broad brush.”

“Shut the hell up, Janet! You’re worse than all the Karens combined.”

Those poor girls. Why do people have an irrational prejudice against these lovely ladies?

A bad example:

“BA DA BA DA BA DA BA DA!!!”

“Everybody down!”

“Bad” because I hate the sound of war. Only psychopaths like the sound of gunfire.

PA! KA! TA! BA! DA!

These consonants are called “plosives.” The word itself sounds explosive. Sounds like what they are — capital-letter loud, harsh, abrasive.

Plosives are why some Germans sound mad, like they need to hock a loogie.

“Come again? Were those words? Just clearing your throat?”

Too many plosives can cause confusion or inadvertently cast spells.

“Bippity boppity boop.”

I have no idea what that Indian dude just said, but I love him. He’s like the brown Mary Poppins.

Hawaiians have very few plosives in their lexicon. It’s why they sound so happy. We love their soft sounds so much that they get away with saying their words twice.

Karen: “Yes, I’ll have the mahi-mahi.”

Waitress: “So two fish dinners?”

Karen: “Did I stutter? I didn’t say mahi-mahi mahi-mahi ... did I?

Waitress: “Of course not. I’m an idiot.”

Karen: I’d like to speak to your manager’s manager.

Waitress: One manager or two?

Plosives, prejudice, and poor Janit

I submit that happy and harsh sounds create a certain degree of linguistic determinism. Karen, Becky, Debbie, and Janit are already explosive-sounding names — perfect for a punchline. And they’re likely Caucasian Boomers, so now we really have the makings of an internet witch hunt.

It’s perfectly acceptable in polite society to make fun of old white people who sound like an expletive.

Their names evoke a visceral response. First, we feel the sharp sound, then our emotions tell our rational minds to buzz off. Feelings bypass reason and go straight to the manager … if you will.

Plosives must have played a role in the origins of our favorite four-letter words. I won’t list them. Last time the algorithm called me a twat and banned me from your eyeballs. Instead, here are some cuss-word contenders that were too long for the short list.

Words we should say more often:

• catawampus

• cockamamie

• codswallop

• malarkey

• twaddle

• Titicaca (arguably a mashup of two 4-letter words)

I’m not sure why “ass” is an expletive. It sounds (and looks) nice. Everyone likes ass. Here’s my favorite ass …

We found a petting zoo near our house recently.

I never knew there were white Peacocks. Look at that ass! That ass is so fine the animal’s feathers evolved to look like arrows at the ends … for all the idiots like me who don’t know where to look.

Assholes are my favorite people. They just make bad first impressions because they’re too honest.

Speaking of honesty …

This is all probably a bunch of titicaca. I’m not a linguist. I’m just spitballing. You should all know I’m full of hot air. But one thing I know is that our dirty looks and attitudes are creating more Karens. I’d turn into a psycho b!tch if I was constantly getting societal stink eye. We’re the problem.

I think Karen’s cool AF, but poor Janet. Explosive plosives bookended that bitch. She never stood a chance. Same with Debbie Downer. The alliteration whores took her down.

So next time you see a Karen or a Janet or Debbie, give them a big bear hug. Lift them off their feet and thank them for all their wonderful memes.

Bryan = Karen

• one (1) pretty woman, one (1) cop, one (1) trucker – statistically impossible

• a DUI: Dylan Under the Influence, and

• hobohemian propaganda

Reader discretion is advised. So is a thumb.

Hitchhiking and Substack are fueled by the kindness of complete strangers. But they’re not strangers for long, are they? There’s a cathartic freedom in talking to someone who doesn’t know where you live. Social guardrails vanish. Secrets sneak out. Stories start to volley back and forth and then BAM! — you’re friends.

My first hitchhiking experience happened a few weeks after my wife, Melina, and I found out we were having twins.

I was driving from Nashville to Indianapolis to meet Mel at a Bob Dylan concert when I saw two hitchhikers standing next to the road.

“Hop in.”

I told the young women where I was going, but they didn’t care. They were riding the wind.

After some small talk, I had to get it off my chest. I hadn’t told anyone about the twins, so opening up to complete strangers was perfect. They talked me through some doubts that I wasn’t sure how to convey to family. I had always wanted to be a dad, but was afraid settling down meant sacrificing my dreams. Ever since I read Into The Wild, I wanted to march into the open country and live the hobohemian life. At least for a while.

Picking up a couple of free spirits was a spark, but their stories of adventure lit a fire under my ass. They urged me to take the leap — told me I could easily go on a short journey before the kids came.

My first hitchhike

Back in Nashville, I wrote an anthem to commemorate my trip called “Free Ride Lullabye.” I planned to unveil it after getting some actual street cred by hitching my way to the Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival. This was an annual pilgrimage to the Gulf Shores.

But I had always attended as a fan. This was my first year that I was a performing songwriter, so my plan had to get me there on time, or I risked burning bridges that had taken years to build. In particular, I had always dreamed of performing at the legendary Florabama, the biggest roadhouse in the South. No way could I let this crazy idea screw it up.

All the festival’s A-listers play the ‘Bama, but around midnight, folks start trickling across the street to the River House, where the real magic happens. All the stars live there during the festival and jam around the kitchen table, or shut the hell up and listen as one songwriter drops a tune that blows everyone away. The bombs drop all night until everyone is obliterated. That’s where I needed to be.

So on November 17, 2008, my journey began. Well, actually I cheated and got a ride to the highway. Melina wouldn’t take me on principle, meaning she didn’t want to play a role in some serial killer picking me up and selling my organs to China. Or something like that.

Since calling a taxi would be a terrible beginning to a story about hitchhiking, I decided to call our realtor. She found our Nashville home where we would eventually raise the twins.

“Hey Ja’nay-nay! Remember when you said to call anytime if I needed you? Well I was just checking the time and ‘anytime’ is right now.” She picked me up immediately — told me not to get killed before she dropped me off on Old Hickory Boulevard.

The temperature was close to freezing at sunset and dropping fast. I didn’t even make it off the 65 South entrance ramp before I got my first ride.

Leigh Ashby

She was young, attractive, had short blonde hair with a pretty smile, and the first thing she did was apologize.

“I’m sorry, but I can only take you to Concord.” I tilted my head back and laughed from my gut. Concord Road was only a few miles away. “Don’t worry darlin’. This is the first time I’ve ever hitchhiked and it only took me a minute to catch my first ride. It’s a good omen, and you’ll get me one exit closer to the beach.”

Her name was Leigh Ashby. She said she was new to Nashville; just moved from Winston-Salem. “That’s cool,” I said. “I have a friend named Mostafa who moved here from Winston-Salem. He studied film at the School of the Arts.”

She perked up, “MOSTAFA!? Crazy Moroccan dude with dreadlocks?”

Leigh parked on a side street and we traded stories about our mutual Moroccan. Before she left, she gave me a mix-CD that she had made especially for road trips. “I have friends who hitchhike,” she said. “So when I saw you, I just felt called to help out.” We parted on that thought.

I wasn’t having much luck on Concord Road, so I decided to try the highway. My best friend Buzz once told me to walk backwards so people could see your face. It made sense, but even a professional vagabond like Buzz would find it difficult to walk backwards while holding a guitar and pulling a cheap suitcase with chincy wheels. I couldn’t even stick my thumb out.

Out of necessity, I managed to push the guitar neck through the suitcase handle so it could ride on top. Freeing up one hand was great, but freeing up the thumb was an evolutionary triumph.

But none of it did me any good that night. By the time I could properly hitchhike, it was too dark and nobody could see my face. Right about the time my shoulders were starting to ache, someone pulled over. Finally! I couldn’t see anything through the headlights. As I walked up, the driver got out. This was a little odd. He had a funny little hat too.

“Dammit!”

He was a cop — told me it was illegal to walk along the highway if I was hitchhiking and said he’d give me a ticket if he saw me past the next exit.

It’s only two miles to Moores Ln, but by the time I got there my shoulders were in bad shape. I regretted not getting a gig bag with shoulder straps. Hell, I really didn’t need a guitar; there would be hundreds to choose from at the festival. Losing my guitar would have been a bad idea though. A guitar is like a beacon of light for hitchhikers. Drivers can see a gig bag sticking up from far away. Plus, people like to support starving musicians.

If I could do it again, I would ditch the guitar, but put all my clothes in the acoustic gig bag. That way, I could lose the suitcase and still give off good musician vibes.

The grueling walk along the highway was over, but all the expensive cars flying by at the exit made my situation look bleak. My thumb was merely a billboard protesting the status quo. Nobody cared. I wasn’t allowed on the highway and the BMWs in Brentwood weren’t stopping. The drivers didn’t even give me societal stink-eye. I didn’t even exist to them.

That’s when I realized that I had to look for shelter and prepare for a tough night. There were some bushes nearby that looked promising.

Officer Whitt

But just before I disappeared from polite society, another cop pulled up, rolled down his window, and asked for my license. He said someone had reported suspicious activity, and asked why I was loitering. I told him my purpose as he ran my ID.

“Son, did you know your license is expired?”

“No sir I didn’t. I guess it’s a good thing I decided to hitchhike.” He laughed, which made him sound human. “It’s a good thing,” he agreed. “You know I’m not supposed to do this, but you’re not going to catch a ride here. I can take you to the Love’s truck stop, about 10 miles south. You’ll have better luck down there.”

Buzz said you almost never get rides from pretty women, cops, and truckers. I was already two for three and the second anomaly was taking me to the third.

Once we got in, Officer Whitt was even friendlier. He asked about the festival, what type of music I liked to listen to and play. While we were talking, he flipped open his dashboard laptop and put on some background tunes.

“Have you heard Dylan’s latest album, Modern Times?”

“No, but a couple months ago, I saw him live in Indianapolis, and he played a few songs from it.”

“Cool, I just got it.”

As Officer Whitt scrolled through his iTunes library, the patrol car started veering to the left and right.

I got scared for a minute, until it hit me. In Cop Land, a four-lane highway is really just one big lane. Police don’t have dotted lines.

Nobody passes a cop. Officer Whitt wasn’t even looking at the road. Then the music drifted in. The steel guitar slid into my ears and her strings began to cry. We were floating. I wouldn’t have cared if Officer Whitt closed his eyes with me.

Then his Bobness laid it on us.

“In the still of the night, in the world’s ancient light.
Where wisdom grows up in strife.
My bewildered brain, tolls in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life.”

Maybe it was a sign of what modern times will look like one day; vagabonds and cops coexisting in peace.

Officer Whitt dropped me off at Love’s around 9:30 pm, wished me luck, and shook my hand as we said goodbye.

I called Melina immediately to tell her that I had just hitched a ride with a huge Dylaphile (or “Bob Cat” as she likes to put it). Mel’s the biggest Dylan fan I know; seen dozens of shows. Bob even said hi to her once between songs. I heard it on one of the bootleg recordings. It was sort of unprecedented for him to say anything at all, but sure enough, he stopped the show to make an announcement.

Ol’ Bobby D. said, “I’d like to say hi to the president of our territorial fan club down front, Miss Linda Lou. It looks like someone shuffled her away. I wish she’d come back.”

After hearing this, Melina ran back up to the front and Bob said, “Hey, you’re back!”

I told her, “If Bob sweeps you off your feet one day, be sure to ask him if I can tag along. Just give me a small room in the castle. He’s got a castle right?”

Melina was just happy I wasn’t freezing to death in a bush. Her sigh of relief said it all. She finally gave me her blessing.

Love’s Truck Stop

The temperature was in the mid-teens, so I got right to work: “Hey, I’m playing at a festival in Perdido Key and could really use a ride if you’re heading that way.” The truckers were all nice, but either they weren’t allowed or they weren’t going south. I delivered my pitch for a few hours before an older gentleman sounded halfway interested. “I’ll think about it.” To which I replied, “I’ll play for my ride or I’ll shut the hell up, either way’s cool.” The man smiled and said, “I’ll be right back.” After getting some provisions, he returned. “C’mon, hop in.”

I was three for three in hitchhiker anomalies! Then came the catch.

“I gotta warn you though, you’ll have to share your seat with another passenger.” I didn’t reply. “What kind of weird kinky trucker shit is this?” I thought. But I was so cold and desperate that I had to scope it out. We walked over to the truck. Dude opened the door and there, sitting on the passenger seat, was the cutest little black poodle I’d ever seen. We both started laughing as my new friend gave me a hearty pat on the back.

Casey Stengel

His name was Casey Stengel (also the name of a former New York Yankees manager) and then there was Ross, the dog. Casey told me how he’d saved Ross a few years back; said he was backing his truck up when someone shouted “Stop!” Casey got out and found this little pathetic creature lying down next to his tire. Ross was in a state of despair, with long hair like he’d been lost for months, all matted and tangled up with burrs. “It’s a good thing I didn’t roll over the poor thing. We’ve been best friends ever since.”

Ross sat on my lap the whole way and listened to us talk about life, the universe, and everything. Like me, Casey wanted to be free and see the open country. Trucking accomplished both. He’d been to every state and traveled three million miles with Ross by his side. Since Casey owned his rig, he could turn gigs down and vacation for as long as he wanted after a drop off. As we talked, trucking started to sound less like a stereotype and more like a romantic dream.

It was heavenly. The entire southern sky looked like fireflies high on cocaine. Later on, I found out that it was because the Leonid meteor showers were peaking. There were so many shooting stars. We lost track somewhere around seventy. Some of them had tails stretching clear across the horizon.

Time flashed by as well. Eight hours later, we were practically family. Casey took me all the way to Love’s in Mobile, Alabama, but wouldn’t let me go. He insisted on waiting until Buzz arrived to pick me up. As he opened his cooler and started making sandwiches, I got the guitar out and started fingerpicking the riff to my newest song. The least I could do was play for my ride.

🎶Free Ride Lullaby

No time to dream American Dreams
Gonna ride the wind and spread my wings
Can’t stand the man. Time to run
New vocation vagabond

I adore you babe, but I can’t tell
When to kiss and when to bail
I’m so sick and tired of
Broken hearts and chasin’ love

I threw away my telephone
Kept my thumb and some rollin’ bones
I threw away my piece of pie
For a piece of mind and a battle cry

No time to fear no lookin’ back
I found myself on the railroad tracks
I see my breath in the air
Catch a train go anywhere

The Gods are blowin’ in my hair
The world is whirlin’ I declare
I’m not homeless, I’m home-free
Nothin’ nobody can take from me

Free ride lullaby

While I played, Casey made me a killer club sandwich. He made a point of saying that he only gets fresh bread and organic produce. I felt bad for scarfing it down and not savoring the aged sourdough. While I was shoving food into my face, Casey asked if he could play a tune.

“Of course! Please.”

So he picked up my Takamine and started fiddling around. He was pretty rusty, but I could hear the skill buried beneath the years. I could tell that the guitar was a long lost friend. Then finally, Casey remembered the riff and started to sing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” by Crosby, Stills and Nash. As he started to sing, Ross started to wag his little nub of a tail. Then halfway through the song, this big ol’ trucker-of-a man began to sob. He got so choked up that he stopped playing.

“You alright?” I asked.

“Yeah … no, I’m fine,” he said. “I just realized … this is the first time I’ve played for Ross.”

I’ll never forget their expressions. The little poodle was looking up at the big burly trucker, listening intently. Apparently, they were having a moment.

It was hard to keep my composure. Fortunately, Casey also sensed the hilarity and tears turned to laughter, which gave me permission to join in as Casey continued the song where he left off.

It was too much. A flood of emotions washed over me. I began laughing and crying. I didn’t know how to feel because I was feeling everything at once. At that moment, I suddenly became still.

The closest thing that captures the way I felt comes from the Sanskrit definition of nirvāna. It roughly translates to an “extinction or disappearance”; literally, “a blowing out.” That’s it. I’m pretty sure I had a blowout. Like a fire that ceases to draw breath and goes out, all my emotions vanished, and for a brief moment there was clarity and gratitude for the gift the universe had given.

When Buzz picked me up, it was still dark. By the time I finished telling my story, we were rolling along the Perdido Key coast as the sun was coming up.

I made good time: sunset to sunrise. I’ll never do it again.

Warning! This post contains:

• the whitest rap ever recorded

• a trombone played suggestively

• one (1) biscuit, nearly fatal, and

• booty-on-booty diplomacy

Reader discretion is advised. Easy on the nutmeg.

Yesterday, I took my dad to what we thought was a songwriter night, but after we signed up at the front desk, we walked in to find ourselves in the middle of a Black poetry night. The open mic was open to all, but there was only one white chick who showed up after us. She was a regular who ended up reading a silly piece about hockey, one of the whitest sports in the world behind ice curling.

This place was black. DJ was spinning. Nails were glowing under the black lights. There wasn’t a menu. The smell of fish frying and potatoes stewing was all you needed to know.

The place was poppin’. And then there was me and my old man, dressed like cowboys with acoustic guitars, like a Hallmark movie that got lost and wandered into a twerk circle that needed baptism.

I found out about this so-called songwriter night through Meetup.com’s Raleigh Songwriter club. I assumed that the one and only event they advertised would be for, you know, songwriters. But whatever. We were there, the place was chill, people were cool. We rolled with it. Plus, the MC said we could do whatever the fuck we wanted. Dangerous words for men raised on tractor fumes and mild concussions.

“Whatever the fuck” must have been the theme. It was raw, ugly, beautiful. It was bad and wrong done right. One guy shouted, “The only period that’s ever stopped me was at the end of a sentence.” The crowd shouted “Rewind!” which meant Dude had to repeat himself while everyone snapped their fingers and laughed their asses off.

Despite the animated laughter, everyone had mad respect. Nobody talked over the poet. It reminded me of the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, where you literally get shushed out the door for being too loud. This place was an anomaly. Most open mics are awful. You’re lucky to have a handful of friends listen while the rest of the bar yaks over your art.

Last night, there must have been 80 people glued to the stage, hanging on every word. If it hadn’t rained so hard that evening, the place would have been packed.

“Alright, we’ve got some fresh meat tonight. Coming all the way from Tennessee, my Nashville brother, give it up for Mr. Darby.”

Everyone was super warm — cheers were welcoming.

“Thank you! So when my son was itty-bitty, about 1 year old, he woke up one day with some seepage around his eye, like this crud had dried up and completely glued his eyelids shut. It was gross. So being the weirdo that I am, it inspired me to write my first rap … which goes:

Boogies in ya nose, crust in ya eye
Working on a poo makes you cry.
Cry for ya suppah. Cry for ya sleep
You don’t know numbers so ya can’t count sheep!!!”

I got a few laughs, some snappy fingers. I was sooooo white.

“I know we’re only supposed to do one piece, but that was just an introduction to my second rap song that I wrote a few weeks back.

The crowd shouted “New shit!” which is a little call and response they do. The MC told me you have to tell the crowd if it’s new shit or old shit.

“Yeah, this one is brand new. I wrote it on the road, hopped up on Adderall, driving 10 hours to Cincinnati to pick up my dad and move him here to Raleigh. So this is our home now!”

Everyone cheered.

“And this is the whitest rap you’ll ever hear … called ‘Fat Baby Legs.’

Chunky chunky chunk ... fat baby legs
Chicka chicka boom ... chicka lay that egg
Pretty pretty please ... don’t make me beg
A little Darb’ll do, but easy on the nutmeg

Talkin’ talkin’ talkin’ stop talkin’ just dance
Party party party gotta gimme romance
Shake-a shake-a shake ... ice in the glass
Billy Goat outta nowhere chewing on my pants

Her love gotta beat like a bongo drum
Boom baby boom baby ... apple bottom bum
Chop choppa chop ... Hellacoppa chopping
Watchin’ through the window ... I’m naked in an apron

Slather peanut butter … peanut butter jelly
Lick-a lick-a lick ... lick it off a’ her belly
But she didn’t shave her hair ... got real scruffy
Fuzzy wuz a bear, but Fuzzy wasn’t fuzzy

So I gave her the slip ... got an upgrade
Gotta new girl ... she my mama marmalade
Shot shot shot shot ... spike the lemonade
I lay-a lay-a lay ... lay her down in the shade

Dip-a dip-a dip, I dip her in some fondue
Trick-a trick-a treat ... I’ll take a trick or two
Yippity skippity whoopty fuckin’ do
What the fox say? I don’t care. Cow go moo!

Love-a love-a love ... I love her warts and all
One time she let it rip ... killed a fly on da wall
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... Ride a bull
I’m a Stallion she donkey ... we be makin mule

Rock it rock it rock it ... shake ya head bang bang
Stomp stomp stomp ... freakin’ out the dog mang
Change in ya pocket, shake it like a piggy bank
Back ‘at ass up and come back — boomerang!

She a strong-willed woman, like Wilma Flintstone
She ride a motorcycle, gotta mind of her own
My baby like to blow, you know she blow a trombone
And she boogie when the Bengals run it in the end zone

Rub a dub dub in my tub bubble bath
My baby so hot, she broke a thermostat
We be gettin’ biblical, kids we begat
Fat baby legs. They feet go pitter pat

Chunky chunky chunk ... fat baby legs
Chicka chicka boom ... chicka lay that egg
Pretty pretty please ... don’t make me beg
A little Darb’ll do ya, easy on da nutmeg

I said a little Darb’ll do, but easy on da nutmeg

Thank you.”

The whole joint lit up as the DJ started spinning to keep the energy going. Everyone thought Cowboy was gonna sing a little ditty, which is what I thought I’d do too, but you know … when in Rome — drop a nursery rhyme and call it hip-hop. Who cares. Black. White. Whatever.

Later on, I went outside to shoot the shit with everyone hanging out by the fish fry. We were all laughing and carrying on when this lady, out of nowhere, had to go and make it weird.

She was like, “Hahaha … so what do you think about your privilege?”

“Jesus. What do I think? Damn.”

“Yeah, what do you think?”

It was a trap. I knew I should run, but …

“I don’t know. I guess it feels pretty good.”

The dude next to her choked on a biscuit, then coughed it up so he could probably breathe, before laughing.

The lady looked pissed.

“It feels pretty good, does it?”

“Well, yeah. I didn’t say I earned it, but ...”

“He said it feels pretty good!”

“A lot of it’s luck of the draw.”

“Luck of the draw my ass. I work my ass off and you’re gonna say it’s luck of the draw?”

Dude’s still laughing through a mouthful of biscuit and manages to mumble, “Chill the fuck out. He’s just telling the truth hahahaha.”

I nodded in agreement. “You don’t choose the hand you’re dealt. You choose how to play it. That’s like you working your ass off.”

She needed to cool off, so I skedaddled. Inside, the DJ was spinning, music was bangin’. My dad and I were talking to these two fine young ladies on the couch next to us. The MC was trying to get everyone up, so his sister started pulling people out of their seats. Now everyone was dancing except these two stiff looking cowboys. One lady noticed and was like, “aww hell nah!” So she danced over and tried to get my dad up.

The MC started chanting, “Go Steeeeve. Go Steeeeve.” But his knees have been so bad lately that I knew he’d hurt himself. I jumped up and saved his ass by getting right up behind hers, facing away of course.

I’m a married man, so I figured a little booty on booty action was an acceptable diversion to avoid a hospital visit.

As soon as our piggy banks touched, she began to shake ‘em both. It about broke my bank. She was all up in my business. It was the first time somebody else’s ass butt dialed my friends. I was no match — twerking like a history teacher at prom.

Everyone in the club quickly surrounded us while the DJ cranked it up. Then one of the most beautiful girls in the bar broke through the circle and decided it would be funny if she made a Darby sammich. There I was, squished up between two lovely ladies, doing the airplane because the rest of me couldn’t move. They had me completely pinned in between their thunder thighs. Phones were out capturing what’ll never happen again — not like that.

After the song ended, I leaned into the lady who I had just pissed the fuck off moments earlier, and said, “It was my great privilege to have danced with you.” She squinted her eyes, which betrayed the smile that was forming.

She didn’t wanna admit I was right. I was privileged. And she did feel good. It feels good when people do nice things to you that you don’t deserve. She didn’t have to apologize. She just kissed me on the cheek and walked away.

True story.

• sex, death, and weather radar

• a feast on the fuckin’

• one (1) decapitation, mid-coitus, and

• cicadas who stucked to death.

Reader discretion is advised. So is connecting before it’s too late.

Wikipedia calls it Flying Ant day, but if I was the editor, I would have totally gone with Nuptial Flight Club.

It’s exactly what it sounds like. Every year, on a hot, sweaty day, swarms of flying ants launch straight up into the air and turn the sky into one giant aerial orgy. Wings shimmer and bodies crash into one big bang.

I’m such a nerd. I get turned on watching bugs. There’s a scientific word for it called entomology — the study of insex.

Sometimes, when conditions are really moist, it attracts so many flying ants that they resemble rain showers on weather radar systems.

This means somewhere, a meteorologist is also getting turned on.

It’s a big annual holiday for local birds as well. Depending on your point of view, Nuptial Flight Club is either feast or fuckin’ – or both: a feast on the fuckin’.

After the deed is done, the prince’s wings fall off and he drops dead. The queen also sheds her wings but does so strategically after landing, which settles the debate on which sex is smarter.

Then, for up to fifteen years, she’ll lay eggs almost continuously, giving birth to an entire colony – hundreds of thousands of land roamers and air fuckers.

Imagine if you were the dudeant, though. You just laid the hottest queen babe in the air! Everything’s cool. Then, all of a sudden, your wings fall off and you plummet to a gruesome death. Way to take one for the team, buddy.

Here’s some more insect S&M to ponder. Ms. Mantis will sometimes incorporate cannibalism into copulation. After she bites her lover’s head off, Mr. Mantis continues to assume the position and finishes her off like a gentleman.

Proof that even decapitation can’t kill the mood. What a good sport. Not many can say they went out doing what they loved. Speaking of which …

The other day, I found two dead cicadas stuck together. It was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen so I said, “Look baby, they stucked to death.”

Being the weirdo that I am, it gave me a wonderful idea – only it came in a dream that woke me up in the middle of the night. The entire song was in my head.

This one’s for all the kinky cicadas out there.

Love Me to Death

The day we met, I gave you my life
Just a little girl, now I’m your wife
Never wanted to leave, but now I’m trying
‘Cause it hurts to breathe – Doc says I’m dying

I don’t know if there’s a heaven above
I’m not religious – I believe in your love
You fell for me, guardian angel
Put a spell on me – “You Are So Beautiful”

Chorus
I’m barely here, but I can hear everythin’
I wanna feel your lips, don’t need no medicine
I’ll fit you into this hospital bed
Be one with me, mi amore before I’m dead

Before I pass into oblivion
Lay your head, hear my heart’s rhythm
Won’t you grant me my last request
Kiss me goodbye and love me to death

Chorus
I’m barely here, but I can hear everything
I wanna feel your lips, don’t need no medicine
I put my lipstick on – the cherry red
I’ll leave my mark before I’m dead

Baby, come quick – I fell on the floor
I’m losing breath – give me yours
Don’t help me up – lay right here
Whisper your love in my ear

Chorus
I’m barely here, but I can hear everythin’
I feel your lips. I feel your medicine
As my heart departs let us profess
our love. Lay me to rest

In peace … loved to death
In peace … loved to death

Maybe insects have it right. Their whole lives revolve around one improbable instinct — to connect before it’s too late. In the end, we’re all just trying to connect and love each other to death.

If you can’t stop your child’s temper tantrums, stick with me. If you are a new parent, this is important.

I’d like to share my shortcomings and successes in an attempt to provide an alternative to corporal punishment. I won’t make a moral case against spanking. Instead, my hope is to show that peaceful parenting is more efficient.

If you think spanking is okay, I hope you’ll consider the system below as a supplement. It can’t hurt (literally), and I’m proud to say it has worked extremely well for us and there are many lessons here for those who don’t have to make our mistakes.

Our experience

I’ve done a ton of research on the topic and have lived through 16 years with fraternal twins. I’ve had the unique opportunity to A/B test spanking and other systems on two completely different personalities. I’ve learned that every method is flawed unless custom modifications are made for individual personalities. So my first piece of advice is to take it all with a grain of salt.

Background

When we began spanking, our twins were about 3 years old. Immediately, I noticed a correlation to my twins hitting each other. Naturally they modeled my example and thought it was the way to deal with each others’ bad behavior.

After I learned what spanking does to the developing brain, I stopped immediately and began researching a whole new system. It took some reverse engineering, but eventually my kids stopped hitting each other, became better friends, and still like each other to this day. (Update: As of this edit, they’re 16 and still say goodnight to each other.)

I’d like to note that I recognize parents who try to ethically spank. I know a few who do this and have raised wonderful children. But one, even ethical spanking can easily get out of control and two, it’s not effective. An ethical spank/mild pat on the butt doesn’t deliver the message and would probably be preferred over severe consequences – or as I like to put it, “an offer that can’t be refused.”

Here’s how it works.

The system

After consulting a few books and several podcasts, I created a system that gradually became harder as behavior improved. Basically, you put a whiteboard up on the fridge, then write a list of a few bad behaviors that you’d like your kids to work on. Think of the things that annoy you the most and work on them first. If they exhibit any of those behaviors, put an X on the board.

One X is just a warning. We all have bad days and deserve a little grace up front. Two Xs need to be addressed. Consequences will need to be different for each child, but consider taking something special away like dessert, toys, or privileges (e.g. permission to go on a playdate, play video games or watch TV). Severe consequences are crucial because timeouts are usually a waste of time. Once, when I was a child, I actually asked to be spanked, in lieu of a timeout, so that I could get it over with and go play.

Three Xs in one day should result in an “offer they can’t refuse.” The base-level consequence began with early bedtime, as in right after dinner. Additional Xs could lead to a full week of early bedtime, taking toys away (up to and including everything in their room), no playtime with friends, no access to devices, etc. These consequences are actually worse than a few pops on the bottom.

Natural consequences

Use a little psychology to transfer their anger away from you toward their own culpability. Instead of making early bedtime sound like a punishment (a kind of jail sentence), focus on natural consequences.

Tell your kids that doctors are like bosses for parents; parents have to listen to them or else they’re not doing their jobs. Explain that when kids misbehave, it’s often because they’re tired and grumpy, so Doc said you just need to take a nap.

“If you don’t go to bed early, our family will pay high costs from sickness and stress, which will drastically reduce the money we’ve saved for toys. We have to follow doctor’s orders, because our health keeps us alive. We’re bummed out too, but this is the reason for early bedtime. You can choose to stay awake or turn the lights back on, but those actions will result in the removal of all your toys from your room. The doctor said it’s crucial to get your rest, so that tomorrow your brain can deal with stress.”

Just saying, “Go to your room!” teaches them nothing and will add to their ever-increasing contempt toward your authority and worldview. “Because I said so” is not an explanation. It’s a phrase that should only be uttered if you’re running an army base. Take the time up front to explain how the world works and your kids will learn that there are logical solutions to problems. They’ll also value your opinion and come to you for advice later in life.

We’ve used the doctor hack hundreds of times in many other situations (vegetables, exercise, and more). It works without fail because it not only validates what you’re saying via the higher power, but also shifts their resentment to the doctor and away from you. Eventually, they learn whatever it is they don’t feel like doing isn’t something to get angry over. Having to do things you don’t want to do, or when you don’t want to do them, is just part of life. When you’re unmotivated or uncooperative, the healthy response is to: 1. Take advice from doctors; and 2. Take a nap.

Custom modifications

Every system has flaws and must be tailored to the individual. I noticed that early bedtime began to be ineffective for Finn. Maybe he learned the lesson that tired = grumpy = bedtime. Maybe he just didn’t mind the extra rest. I already knew timeouts never fazed him. He’d just sing to himself or ponder the secret mysteries of the universe, the latter being something he did most of the time anyway. Fiona, by contrast, loathed timeouts.

In the end, I learned to take away what each of them loved the most. For Finn, it was books and video games. For Fiona, it was relationships, people, and family time. For our dog, Piper, it was the poo she rolled in. She hated when I cleaned that shit off.

The rule of three

It’s crucial that you only work on two or three bad behaviors at once. This exact number could be more or less, depending on maturity level, but the idea is if you focus on more than three behaviors the system will fail, especially when one behavior is particularly challenging.

One time, I took all three behaviors off the list and made “not listening” the sole focus because it drove me crazy and it was too easy to get three X’s by disobeying that one rule. In general, if you pile on too many bad behaviors, your kids will realize the system is unbeatable.

For this system to work, you have to be tough but fair. Adjust the numbers of prohibited behaviors and the number of Xs allowed as necessary, so that your kids don’t become apathetic.

They’ll act out just to say, “Screw you and your unbeatable system.” For other bad behaviors that weren’t on our list (and there were many at first), I’d either ignore them if they were minor or punish with timeouts. So timeouts can play a small part in the system, but as the primary go-to, they were mostly ineffective.

Be patient. It takes about three to six weeks to conquer one bad behavior, at which time you erase and replace. One down. Next problem.

Nervous ticks

Chewing fingernails is one of those habits that you completely ignore. One syndicated columnist, named John Rosemond, instructs parents to not put that one on the list. It’s actually a coping mechanism that helps children deal with stress. Take it away and you could actually cause more petty fights and frustration. Rosemond recommends letting your child have that one. Many children stop this or other nervous tics when they become more comfortable with life. Finn quit biting his nails around 8 years old after I made him a $50 bet that he couldn’t stop for a month straight. He won.

Lying

It’s one behavior that doesn’t work with the X system. Rosemond suggests that you almost completely ignore it. “Almost” because you should at least address the issue. It seems counterintuitive, but it worked for us. The most you have to say is “Don’t lie” or “I don’t want to hear it” and walk away. Never fight it. Shut it down. Don’t try to catch them in a lie or attempt to reason. Don’t give them the slightest clue it’s upsetting. Even if you prove them wrong, there may still be an agonizing, time-consuming back-and-forth fight. When those kinds of fights become routine, they learn they have power over you, to break you down and inflict stress. What’s worse, they learn that sometimes lying works. If it helps them get off the hook, they’ll fight for it every time, even if the odds are slim.

Go with your gut. Ninety-five percent of the time, if you have a solid reason to believe they’re lying, you are right. Five-year-old psychology is pretty easy to see through. Don’t punish them for lying unless it’s really bad. You be the judge. But in real life, liars lose relationships and people stop taking them seriously. So mirror this natural phenomenon.

We had a short phase, but I ignored my son’s lies for about a month when he was 5. I didn’t believe he made up the jokes. I knew the jokes he made up and I knew the ones he plagiarized. The jokes he made up were actually funny (for a 5 year old) and the ones he stole, I had heard. I simply said, “Those jokes are funny, but you can’t tell me that you made it up. Stop copying.” He fussed. I said, “We’re not having this conversation,” and walked away. He learned quickly that it sucks when your voice isn’t heard — when your stories don’t matter. That phase has never resurfaced.

Hitting

Hitting (outside of defense) doesn’t have to be on the list. It will always result in three X’s and a severe consequence. Do not tolerate violence. I’ve been known to take every toy away for a week or a phone away for three months.

That said, if you watch my kids wrestle or play at karate, you might think they have no mercy. But look closely and you’ll see quite a bit of restraint. First of all, they’ve been practicing how to kick each other in the head since the womb. Second, as a family we play-fight all the time, so they understand the rules. “Stop!” means stop and hitting out of anger is not permitted. The boundaries can be tough to manage, but like any other sport it requires practice. You learn to respect your opponent, even if it’s for selfish reasons. It’s fun to have fun and you don’t want things to get out of hand or game over.

Speaking of which, check out our 🎬 Gladiator funboard game.

Keep calm

Aside from insignificant coping mechanisms, small annoyances, and lying, stick to the system. And never let them know you’re upset, even when they’re hitting. This rule applies across the board. Never yell or get mad when you administer consequences. You might think it’s effective, but it actually gives them power and in the long run, the upper hand. In life, there are consequences to bad behavior and they must feel the full brunt of their actions, not your anger.

If you add yelling to the mix, then some children may act out just to get a rise out of you. For some children, yelling adds resentment to the equation, so they won’t even be upset at the consequence – they’ll be mad at you for embarrassing them in front of people. If you say what will happen calmly or take them aside and explain what will happen later, they only have themselves to blame. Keep the pain centered on them. Take the monkey off your back.

I even created safeguards around this prohibition. If I yelled at them, all they had to do was point it out and not only would the consequence be nullified, I would owe them five bucks. I also clearly defined yelling verse raising my voice and delivering a stern talk. Giving them the power to enforce the rules of a contract will serve you in the long run because they will understand the system is about justice, not arbitrary punishments.

That said, I don’t always live up to this rule. I still find myself shouting, because I’m flawed. At the risk of Finn and Fiona hating my existence, I had to create a system to counter my nature. As a result, instead of them feeling powerless or afraid when I yell, they remind me that I need to chill out, that I owe them, and that they don’t get an X per the agreement. Instead of yelling, I simply shrug it off and give them an X.

Stick to the rules

If one out of 100 times you let them off the hook, they’ll beg 100% of the time for you to go easy. One out of 100 is still pretty good odds for a child. Administering the consequence 100% of the time results in 0% begging.

It takes a little while, but they soon realize begging is futile. Also, keep in mind that begging and arguing are two different things. Arguing is good as long as they’re using reason, logic, and evidence. Because we talk about our issues calmly, arguing is something we do regularly. And because we make win–win deals, arguing has become a part of our family culture.

Many times, my children have used my own logic from past arguments to mitigate consequences. I don’t ever let them off the hook, but if the logic is sound, I will change my mind. Still, sometimes they just have to stop crying and explain what happened before logic can happen. If you’ve demonstrated that anger in tough situations is not needed, they’ll learn not to cry and shout during tough situations.

I mentioned making deals. Start making win–win deals in almost all interactions. Let them argue and make deals with you. A deal will solve almost 99% of the problems you have with your kids. If they want something out of the ordinary, I make them earn it. If I want something, I promise to play with them for a specific time period. Negotiation is an art that will help them immensely later in life.

If you never falter with the rules, consistency becomes second nature. You begin to see quick results. You create a machine that knocks out bad behaviors with incredible efficiency. They get used to the system and some bad behaviors are eliminated within days. They understand the consequences, and realize that defiance is not worth it.

Timing

Keep in mind that you’ll often be in a location that won’t allow for a severe consequence. Again, keep cool, make a mental note and enforce it when you get home. You don’t have to enforce anything at the time of the infraction. You don’t even have to tell them what will happen if doing so will cause a scene (e.g. ruin dinner at a nice restaurant). Plus, in your anger you may make empty threats you’re not prepared to enforce. Just think about it. Store it away. Strategically withhold the consequence until the time is right. Later on, you calmly say, “OK, it’s time to go to bed early because XYZ.” If you tell them the news before dinner, they may not eat their vegetables. It’s all in the timing.

Evolution and sunset

Finally, it’s important for the system to gradually become harder as behavior improves. After a while, three Xs per day becomes easy and the consequences dry up. So we all agreed to change the rule to two Xs per day, then eventually one X per day.

When they were nine years old, I abandoned the X system altogether. One day the kids woke up to see that I erased everything on the whiteboard and replaced it with a big heart. I later explained that we didn’t need it anymore. If a bad behavior resurfaced, I would decide at the time what the consequence would be or cut a deal.

Parents: 90% of your parenting can be done in nine years. After you nip bad behaviors in the bud, the other 10% is just being there, being a friend. It’s fun. Play badminton. Spend TIME with them. It’s all they really need.

Honestly, Finn and Fiona have been incredible since we nixed the system, even as teenagers. We still get some bickering, issues with chores, but we only need one “X” now. We just cut their left arm off (i.e. take their phone). That’s it.

Make a deal

Deals get really creative and are custom-made for the situation. Over time, my kids started to lay out specific requirements for games, playtime, etc. It was amazing to watch and often I wanted to jump in. Don’t do it, though. Let them negotiate as much as possible without interfering. In other words, let them set the structure and create rules themselves. This is how you pass the baton.

Finn came to me one morning with a problem and instead of getting out of bed, I simply said “Make a deal,” rolled over, and went back to sleep. Later, I found out that Finn made a deal to play with Fiona for an hour, if she stayed out of the computer room, so he could record his video game screencast in peace and without a bunch of noise in the background. She agreed. As time goes by, the rules or terms are better articulated. As long as we clearly communicate what we want and come to an agreement, then we get what we want.

Positive versus negative reinforcement

The X system is based on consequences or negative reinforcement, but making win–win deals adds the crucial element of positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is more efficient because a child will often forego small rewards so they can continue living comfortably in bad habits. Your system for driving behavioral change cannot be solely based on a reward system. Positive reinforcement must supplement a much more robust system that mirrors real life – which, again, focuses on consequences. You don’t always get rewarded for being a good citizen or doing your job, but bad behavior is almost always noticed and there are usually tangible negative consequences.

That said, of course you should create rewards for good behavior. I also reward randomly, to show an occasion, birthday, or holiday aren’t requirements for showing love. Of course, reward them when they do outstanding work. This seems obvious, but what’s more important is to stop rewarding mediocrity. Stop saying “That’s nice” or “Good job” every time they do something cute. Don’t squash dreams, but be honest.

Eventually, they’ll see through the “Good-job!” BS. Around that time, they’ll also start to ignore you. Tersely replying that school was “good” signals they don’t have to be honest – an example you may have set by modeling insincerity. Take off the mask, roll the façade aside and give them honesty. Sometimes it’s hard, but they’ll come to you for the hard stuff if you’re real with them.

Finn and Fiona worked through most of the bad behaviors we targeted. As a result, I stopped giving X’s. That lasted for about two years, but we had to start it up again during a bad phase or two. Listening is a constant work in progress. My point here is that you should feel free to stop or start the system as needed. Backsliding happens. New bad habits happen. Your goal is to raise kids who are peaceful, obedient, and trusting of their elders, while retaining skeptical minds. The latter is possible because they’re not punished for arguing.

Unintended consequences of spanking

Some research indicates that spanking may actually lower IQ by two or three points. I posit that children who are regularly hit out of anger look at most adults with fear and contempt. They may not trust teachers because they equate the school’s force with the same force of their parents’ hands. Constant fear leads to blind obedience, apathy, self-harm and, in many cases, to abuse of others out of identification with the abuser(s). Thus, force begins the gradual decay of our families and school standards.

Many longitudinal (multi-year) studies on spanking that follow children for significant portions of their lives have documented correlations with teen pregnancy, drug use, domestic violence, criminal activity, Type 2 diabetes, cancer, depression, eating disorders and more. Spanking may “work” for docile children. Really, they just live in fear and begin their lives with a chip on their shoulders – a distrust of adults, or those in power. For others it flips a switch in their brains and causes them to rebel, fight, and perpetuate a culture of violence. What do you want your legacy to be?

Freedom

Give your children choices. Give them peaceful parenting. Hopefully, this will help restore broken relationships and lead to a much happier life. I thought I was losing my children during the short time when we spanked. Their anger and violent behavior got pretty bad for awhile, but thankfully, I discovered this system while researching peaceful parenting.

What do you want the world to be like? One of the roots to this answer starts with peaceful parenting. Please consider sharing this piece. Share the love!

One day, I was in the restroom stall at work when a whistler walked in mid-melody, but stopped short to spare the guy at the urinal.

It bothered me. His unfinished melody was just hanging there and needed to come back home to the tonic, so I did the reasonable thing and whistled off the rest of the riff.

There was a brief pause as the man contemplated. On the one hand, there was bathroom etiquette. On the other, I had challenged him to a duel. My clairvoyance picked up an inaudible “Fuck it” before he proceeded to whistle the next line, continuing the call-and-response from the toilet next door.

Our corporate commodes lived in rooms with four walls, so I could comfortably whistle my freak flag in private. My purple shoes would have been dead giveaways under normal stalls. The high ceilings gave us cathedral-grade reverb, basically turning the tiles into our backing choir. We traded solos loud and proud, sometimes incorporating multiple orifices at once for percussive punctuation.

At some point it got a little too weird, even by my standards, and it occurred to me that I should probably bounce before Dude was done. I don’t think either of us wanted to know who the other weirdo was on the other side of the wall.

But there wasn’t a clear victor. I needed closure, so I broke out the big guns. I had saved my ace in the hole, a warble that took years to perfect. My tweet rivaled the sweetest of songbirds — less melody and more free-form jazz. I went on for a few measures before whirling to a stop with a dissonant dual tone that I learned from Jim Carrey in The Truman Show — when he was drawing on the mirror, making flying-saucer sounds.

Try it out: just hum and whistle at the same time. If you do it right, the dueling harmonics are super eerie and can clear a room in no time. My dog hated that noise and would scold me if I broke it out.

Urinal guy ran for the hills when my stall started sounding like the hub of an alien spacecraft.

There was no response. I waited for some kind of concession — applause, a groan, anything. All I got was the fluorescent hum. I couldn’t tell if the silence was the “sound” of defeat or if my neighbor was just contemplating his next move…

“Plop.”

It was done. He was pooped.

There wasn’t a mic to drop, so I flushed the toilet.

As I finished washing my hands, relishing in the weirdest victory ever, the most wonderful sounds began floating out of the whistler’s stall. They reminded me of the nightingales that lulled me to sleep in Macedonia.

Celestial sounds were dancing across the ceramic-tiles. As I was walking out, the now-distinguished gentleman slipped in a few trills that would have twisted my tongue right off. The door slammed behind me, sealing the verdict.

There was no question. He beat me.

But can you ever truly defeat a whistler?

Whistling while you work isn’t just for show. It’s an assertion of self in a place built to strip you down to a role. You might be able to out-spreadsheet the whistler, but you can’t silence them.

Another existential ritual is the workplace shit. It’s one of the few officially sanctioned pauses from performance, a small private place where the day’s metrics fall away and you get to be messy, human, honest. In that stall, for two minutes, you rehearse ideas, invent jokes, and plan your escape from corporate life.

Add the workplace whistle to your corporate constitution and you’ve carved out a little pocket of self-sovereignty.

So sure, he beat me on sound. He won the duel. But he didn’t win at what counts, which is the capacity to be undeterred, to keep making noise. That’s a victory we share with every whistler alike, with all the good men who rage against the dying of the light. A victory you can’t tick off on a performance review.

When we got back to our desks, an impromptu meeting request had arrived in our inboxes – a drop-everything, all-hands-on-deck kinda thing.

So we all gathered in the conference room and hopped on the call. Our CMO got right to business announcing $300 million dollars in layoffs – just in time for Christmas.

Nothing says holiday spirit like Santa outsourcing the elves to Bangladesh.

None of us were about to go back to work, so we decided to grab lunch. As we piled into the van, the colleague next to me began to hum a familiar tune, and I had no choice but to finish him off.

We looked up at each other like long-lost brothers, separated by tractor beams at birth.

I wanted to give the guy a hug, but it was a delicate situation. We both knew that if one of us started laughing or confronted the other weirdo, then we’d have to tell the story to everyone. So we shut the hell up. It was our little secret.

His secret, rather. I’ve no shits to give.

My daughter, Fiona, saw Billie Eilish last night with her friends and it reminded me of a beautifully tragic story from when we saw her perform in New York City.

An old man who looked to be about 80 was sitting next to me, with two young girls beside him.

“Did you come with your grandkids?” I asked.

“Oh no. I’m here by myself.”

That alone was surprising. Then he told me it was his first time out in four years. Before I knew it, I was holding my breath.

COVID started it all. The virus took his wife’s life and nearly his own.

For years he wouldn’t step outside. After she died, he shut down completely. Then came the cancer. Two long years of chemo and recovery blurred together. When physical therapy got him back on his feet, the first thing he did was hop a train to Madison Square Garden to see Billie Eilish. Her show was his grand entrance back into the world.

I didn’t have time to process – let alone wipe my tears – before Billie hit the stage and an explosion of sound washed over us all.

My daughter was to my right, glowing – literally and figuratively – filming as she sang along. Then I looked to my left, and I kid you not, the old man was doing the exact same thing as my 15-year-old daughter – smiling ear to ear, capturing the magic with his phone, and singing every last fucking word to “CHIHIRO.”

Two generations, side by side, lost in the same light. And I was crying like a baby – which, for the record, does not look cool in 4K.

Gingers don’t get many compliments for their color. Let’s be honest. Our complexion isn’t fair at all. It’s more of an open season for punchlines.

It’s cool. We’re used it. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised when my wife said that I looked sorta tan ... ish. Tan-adjacent perhaps? Her words were thoughtful-ish, but she was wrong, or fooled to be precise.

The beach photo is an optical illusion — a rare phenomenon occurring once a year on the summer solstice, when the sun hovers directly overhead.

For sixty blessed seconds, gingers briefly resemble our day-dwelling cousins while standing in the shadows of our big-ass umbrella hats.

Check our closets. We all own at least one personal solar eclipse for this hallowed holiday.

It’s a real thing, which is why I’d like to make it official and formally submit a few new calendar entries to the Bureau of National Distractions and BBQ Permits.

It’s time to celebrate:

• Pale-Ass Pride Day
  A clothes-optional, SPF-regulated event

• Chromatically-Divergent Awareness Week
  Seven days of safe space for ginger-fication and vanilla jokes*

• White Awareness Monthly
  Monthly epidermal reminders on the dangers of daylight

• Be Fair 24/7/365!
  Fairness isn’t seasonal folks. It’s year-round.

Let’s get chipped!
Come out and support your friendly neighborhood overlords. The Surveillance & Sunblock Administration (SSA) is studying how long we can last in the light. The procedure is almost non-invasive and mostly free.**

Taxpayers needn’t worry about subsidizing our sunscreen. Losses will be recouped at night since there won’t be any need for sparklers. We already glow in the dark.

Mandatory Transparency Statements
*Jokes must be be cleared through the Ministry of Acceptable Humor.
**Technically, your taxes have already prepaid for your participation. We promise to squander it responsibly.

There was a beautiful girl (inside and out) and her brother, who gave everyone in the youth group incredible back rubs. They were truly gifted, Irish twins – super close. We’d often see them practicing on each other, perfecting their language of love.

Before service, they’d start a “love train,” and all of us nerds would fight to be next to them. So we’d all get in line and massage each other.

It was never sexual. We were just kids and they were totally cool. They never made a move on anyone outside of church … ever.

But make no mistake – they were masters of foreplay. It was long and slow. Tension, then release. Not the deep, knot-busting Swedish kind, but the kind that feels good.

To this day, I tell masseurs to refrain from using oil because there’s nothing more sensual than Irish-twin, skin-to-skin friction.

They didn’t just pull our hair. They’d gather a clump and twist right up to the edge of pain, then ease off and twist back the other way to balance it out. The effect was instant shivers up your spine – euphoric as hell. Heck, I didn’t even know what an orgasm was at the time, but I knew what it felt like.

Fast-forward several years. My girl-thang (now wife) was thoroughly confused as I applied all my church lessons.

As soon as she caught her breath, she questioned my experience.

“First time eh?”

“What can I say?”

God moves in mysterious ways.

Vulnerability is the new full-frontal. You’re welcome, Al. The algorithm lets me call him Al now. We’re tight.

Apparently, I have to write about my toxic trait. My favorite new friend nominated me. What are friends for? I always say public humiliation thickens the skin.

Thanks ! You’re the best ;)

It’s really hard to reveal in front of millions of people (who won’t read this), but I have toxic breath. My daughter makes me painfully aware, which is probably a good thing because otherwise my ego would say that my breath smells like leadership. He’s a feisty one. We both call this piece:

Tell me when I smell
June 1, 2013 | Twins are 4 years, 3 months old

Peeking into Finn and Fiona’s room.

Me: “If you guys don’t take a nap, we’re not going to the dog park with Kenobi and Piper.”

Fiona: “Daddy, we’re not going to the dog park if you have stinky breath.”

Me: “You can smell it from here? Jesus. All the other dogs have stinky breath – why can’t I?”

Fiona: “Daddy, I have to tell you something. [whispering in my ear] You need to brush your teeth.”

Me: “Thank you baby. I can always count on you to tell me when I smell. That’s good. Finn just lets me stink. I’ll brush my teeth if you take a nap. Deal?”

Fiona: “Deal.”

Me: “Kiss?”

Fiona: “NO!”

I know what you’re thinking. All the other preceding nominees are practically naked over here, revealing painful secrets they’ve never told anyone – and I’m over here talking about “toxic” breath. I’m a pretty shallow person … on the surface that is, but it’s just a front.

Behind the façade is a big-ass ego – emphasis on the ass. He’s a recovering perfectionist and a persnickety little bitch, if we’re honest.

The only reason I can call my ego a bitch is because we’ve done a lot of work to keep him in check. My wife and kids have to regularly beat him down with a stick. It’s great – so much cheaper than real therapy. Occasionally, though, it backfires and the Irish bastard blows up.

Self-control clearly wasn’t working, so I did what every modern man does when cornered by his flaws. I gamified them. Told the fam that I’d give ‘em five bucks every time I yelled. And because I’m also a frugal miser, it actually worked. Now the kids try to get a rise out of me like it’s their part-time job.

The same perfectionist also loves beautiful things and creates art, so I put up with myself. We have a love/hate relationship with me.

The breath thing finally cleared up one Christmas when my wife got me a waterpik, which begs the question: was it a gift for me or her?

I don’t know, but I’m still working on the ego halitosis. It’s a lifelong hack. It helps to picture myself naked when giving this speech in front of millions of people (who won’t read this). My ego immediately loses its erection. It’s hard to brag when you’re exposed. Shrinkage is always good for the ego.

Thank you for putting up with me. I love you all. You can always overshare and get naked with me for the algorithm. Al’s always watching, always turned on. That’s not weird at all.

Yesterday was the end of my Las Vegas trip. After my conference concluded, I had a minute to lounge around the pool.

A little Hispanic girl, maybe 4 years old, jumped into the hammock next to mine and started singing as loud as she could, “I’m a little taco! I’m a little taco!”

It was so stinkin’ adorable. Too adorable.

Not to be outdone, I quickly wrapped the tortilla shell (tan canvas hammock) around my entire body and operatically (à la Chevy Chase in Three Amigos) mimicked her melody singing, “I’m a big burrito! I’m a big burrito!”

La chiquita y su madre laughed and laughed. Next, my feet slid out of the “burrito” and started conducting, cueing the little girl to resume her part.

La chiquita: “I’m a little taco! I’m a little taco!”

Me: “I’m a big burrito! I’m a big burrito!”

Our call and response lasted for a while, but we couldn’t keep the deadpan going, so we both laughed and then said adios.

What fun! I was rolling my r’s and everything. Thankfully, there weren’t any social justice warriors nearby to accuse me of cultural appropriation.

“How dare that Ginger imitate a burrito like that!”

One day, my mother-in-law’s pug couldn’t wait for Christmas dinner, so Suki helped herself to some mushrooms in the backyard.

Now, my hound dog comes from a line of canines evolved for olfactory work. Piper’s giant schnoz can smell every dinner in the neighborhood, even reverse-engineer the recipes from a whiff o’ shit.

Unfortunately, for Suki, a pug’s mug was bred to make people laugh.

Her nose can’t pick out the poison from your yard-variety mushroom like Piper’s can. So when Suki puked in the kitchen, I didn’t think much of it. Some of us figured she got a few too many dinner scraps. We ended up putting Suki in her carrying case to keep her from begging.

After the feast, Fiona released the mini mastiff. Suki was so excited, she got the zoomies and raced around the house. Except she didn’t make it around the first lap. She rounded the first bend and plowed straight into the wall.

Thankfully, pugs are good at smashing into things with their face. How do you think they got to looking that way? I was horrified when I saw her, until I realized that was just how she looked all the time.

But within 10 minutes, she got worse: wobbling to and fro, nosediving for the toy she was trying to pick up. It was then that the penny dropped and I recalled seeing brown rubbery bits in her puke. Yaya immediately took Suki to the animal hospital.

We were all terrified. Sure enough, the labs came back and confirmed our suspicion. They were shrooms. Fortunately for our little court jester, she was only tripping balls.

The vet said she’d be fine in a few hours, after the Zoloft kicks in and the, “flying purple elephants disappear” – exact words.

Melina told me to go say something to make her mother feel better about everything, so I walked her and Suki out to the car.

“G’night Jane! Sorry for not telling you Suki puked right away. You had worked so hard making dinner. I just wanted to clean it up without you worrying about another mess.”

I had a joke prepared, but was too afraid to say it in front of my mother-in-law. Jane must have read my mind, because it’s word-for-word what I had rehearsed in my head.

“Maybe we should get Suki to show us where those magic mushrooms are!”

We both laughed. “That’s what Lisa said,” she added. Jane had just hung up the phone with Lisa, her best friend, fellow nurse and soldier in war (i.e. Duke’s ICU). Jane retired from 40 years of service there, and Lisa can’t wait to retire, so she can go on long walks in the woods with Suki.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t think I can trust that schnoz of hers.”

Jane laughed even harder as she pulled away with her crazy dog.

Correction: None of us call her a “dog” anymore. That’s below her now. We call her “Suki Da,” which is Japanese for, “I love you” and is much more fitting for an enlightened being.

BONUS: Alternative titles

Our pug ate shrooms and …

- spoke fluent dolphin for 20 minutes
- now refers to herself as “The Vessel”
- now gives unsolicited TED Talks to the Roomba

“Stop the car!” cried Willow! “Pull over here,” my sister continued frantically.

Mom quickly pulled off and parked in front of a retail strip mall.

“What’s going on?” Mom inquired.

There was no time to explain. Willow exploded out of the car, sprinted across the parking lot, then charged a minivan that was about to take off, yelling “STOOOOOP!”

The soccer mom was either won over by Willow’s sweet face or afraid for her life. Either way, the driver didn’t run my sister over as Willow got on all fours.

“There’s a kitty next to your tire!!!”

The lady looked relieved that she hadn’t run anything over and that Willow was merely a crazy cat lady and not a total whack job.

The tiny tortoise shell was quivering, couldn’t have been more than a pound – clearly malnourished by the looks of her ribs sticking out. When Willow reached under the vehicle, the little kitty took off, then hightailed it through a sea of cars, disappearing into an overgrown wooded area at the far end of the strip.

Hot in pursuit, Willow ran into the bramble, crawled through a thicket of thorns, traversed down a ravine full of poison ivy, fell into a legit quagmire, sunk down to her knees, almost lost a flip-flop in the muck, was scratched and bloodied and muddied, but by golly, Willow crawled out of that bush with a cat!

Willow was well aware that feral cats won’t let you kittynap them without first putting up a fight. This wasn’t her first rodeo. She was getting sliced open, bitten, hissed at – almost dropped the thing until she instinctively placed the little beasty over her bosom. As soon as she heard a heartbeat, the little furball melted into Momma and calmed down. She was home.

Meanwhile, Mom and Grandma were thoroughly confused, waiting in their car. When Willow walked up toting the tortoise shell, they didn’t question the mud or the blood or the leaves in her hair. It made perfect sense. Just another day in the life of the Wonderful World of Willow. And now, Tiki.

Tiki Cummerbund Quagmire Jones, that is.

Bonus quagmire story!

Believe it or not, I’ve got another quagmire one. My sister Willow rescues kittens from quagmires. I almost drowned in one, but in slow motion, in front of hundreds of people in Nashville, TN. Different quagmires, same family tradition.

Another CRAZY pet rescue

Our pug took shrooms and finally understands jazz now ... but still hates it

A true story about zoomies, zen and Zoloft 👇

Melina’s family from Raleigh was visiting us in Nashville, so I was on my best behavior, trying not to do anything stupid.

Around lunchtime, I was coming back from Calypso Cafe, heading towards Centennial Park where everyone was waiting by the Parthenon for a nice family picnic. As I power walked across the park, I made a split decision to shave a few minutes off the delivery. I could have walked around the lake like a normal person, but this particular summer, the universe had programmed a little Easter Egg into my “game,” a shortcut that would surely impress my soon-to-be in-laws.

A few months back, city renovators had drained the lake for a big beautification project. Afterwards, the summer sun had baked the basin floor dry.

“Aces!”

So I jumped down off the cement ledge surrounding the basin and cruised across the “lake.” I wasn’t walking on water, but by God, I was delivering that Jerk Chicken with God speed.

The normies walking the perimeter were all telling their children not to get any “bright” ideas. Then I fell into a quagmire and felt everyone’s collective condemnation.

“See Johny. That’s why you don’t cut corners. Fucking quagmires will getcha every time.”

Apparently, the basin floor wasn’t completely dry. Below the thin layer of baked mud was actual mud, and lots of it.

“A little help?!” I suggested to a family walking by.

They ignored my plea – probably afraid that I’d pull them in. I couldn’t use my hands to get out because they were carrying four giant bags of food that I was not about to set in the mud. The muck was similar to quicksand insomuch that when I lifted one foot, the other foot sank further down.

Any movement accelerated the sinking. “I’m going to die in a quagmire,” I said to myself.

Mel’s family was likely within earshot, so shouting for help was not an option. It was at that point that I had a moment of clarity. Instead of struggling, I stood still. A few seconds later, the sinking stopped. My ego was suffocating, but at least my lungs would be pumping oxygen for the foreseeable future and not fish poop.

It didn’t take long before a gentleman ran out to lend a hand. He was a beautiful man, undeterred by the danger of drowning in slow motion.

He didn’t look native to Nashville, towering over me, wearing a warm smile and a brightly colored tunic pulled over his shoulder. My angel had huge hands that engulfed mine. Pulling me out seemed effortless as he leaned his center of gravity back over solid ground, giving me just enough leverage to lift my feet out without the two of us breaking through the crust.

After much gratitude and a big bear hug, I said goodbye and then sludged around the “lake” to feed the fam. And by sludged, I mean strutted my stuff with scum up to my knees and four pristine white bags in my hands. My gait was off kilter since one of my shoes slipped off in the muck. Once again, I played it off like victory swagger and practiced my pimp walk all the way around the lake.

The drowning of my purple shoe was a tragic loss. He was a good shoe, faithful to the end.

I could have tossed his twin so as not to waddle like a penguin, but I wasn’t ready to part ways so soon after the fall of his fraternal brother. People would swear they looked identical, but one was left-footed while the other was wrong. We all knew Lefty would outlast his brother.

Poor Wrongfoot. He was doomed before his first step.

Which is why it was better for my soon-to-be in-laws to see the real me. The world’s already overflowing with fake – with quagmires that look solid on the surface but are full of muck underneath.

Better to get it all out early, set the bar low so that anything short of idiocracy would feel like a warm welcome. I’d rather be an occasional surprise than a perpetual fuck-up.

Bonus near-death story

The second time I thought I was going to die was even more embarrassing.

It could’ve happened to anyone, but I accidentally gave the wrong wife a massage. I almost died, but I’m pretty sure a joke kept my face symmetrical.

I changed my first diaper on Monday, August 27, 2007. It smelled like fermented mothballs with a touch of failed dreams. I don't know where those subtle notes came from, but they were good reminders to use birth control.

Melina and I had just started getting serious, so this was our first major test. Her brother, Paul, was in Paris participating in a 1200-kilometer bicycle race, so we were babysitting his kids for an entire week.

We were told that little Nick knew how to go number two in his potty chair, but the convenience of taking a dump in a diaper whenever and wherever is the obvious choice.

The smug smile on his face looked like it was mocking the anguish in mine. It can’t be true, coming from a two-year old, but it felt like a premeditated power play to balance the scales, like maybe I should think twice about my eat-your-broccoli-before-dessert warnings.

Nicholas (in his mind): “How do you like this time-out?”

Me: “I'm going to barf.”

Nicholas: “Mwahahahahaaaaaa!”

I couldn’t help but sneak a smile while writhing in revulsion.

Darby (in my mind): On second thought, I’d like to have one or two of these little shits someday. Sophie and Nicholas are too stinkin’ cute. That, however, is not going to stop me from destroying them in the next pillow fight. I'll be ready this time.

Two years and two fraternal things later …

Shootings, oil spills, wars, and famine. It’s time to balance the scales.

Since 2020, I’ve been chasing hope, curating good news, and sending friends these antidotes to despair. It’s become a running archive of breakthroughs, small miracles, and proof that the world is getting better, if you know where to look. I’ll post new issues every month. Subscribe if you’d like a little light in your life!

The Far Side Effect

Think of this like flipping through an old Far Side calendar. One cartoon makes you smirk, the next gets a chuckle. Keep going and suddenly you’re howling. That’s the compounding power of joy. You can read the articles later, but just let the headlines wash over you starting out. Their sum is greater than the parts.

By the time you reach the bottom, I hope something in you flips — that your faith in humanity gets a second wind. Come to the other side my friend.

Headlines of Hope v21

Animal edition

Bison Ranchers Return Thousands of Animals to Native Lands and Witness Total Rejuvenation of Ecosystem

While Czech Region is Busy Planning Hydro-Project, Beavers Do it For Them–Saving Millions

This Rat Sniffs For Landmines In Cambodia–And Has Just Won A Gold Medal For His Life-Saving Work

Rats Trained to Carry Tiny Backpacks Into Earthquake Zones – So Rescue Teams Can Talk to Survivors

Oysters Carry Protein That Kills Bacteria Behind Pneumonia, Strep Throat, and Scarlet Fever

Whale Feces Represent One of the Greatest Allies Against Climate Change—Perhaps Even More Than Trees

Because whale poo is phytoplankton's favorite food and phytos refresh nearly 50% of the atmospheric oxygen on earth. That's like four Amazons.

One Way To Protect Cattle From Predators? Paint Eyes On Their Butts. Really.

Photographer Captures Incredible Moment Wild Orangutan Offers Hand to Man in Snake-Infested Waters

Amid Great Chase, Tiger and Boar Call a Truce After Falling into Well

So wild animals are smart enough to realize they were dead in the water, literally and figuratively. Eating the other would have merely postponed their demise, so they called a truce and chilled out.

We're basically living in a modern-day Aesop's fable. Little children and animals understand it.

We've dug ourselves into a hole. There's a way out, but it's not what we've been told. Nothing we do will stop the mega rich from controlling their puppets. And they want us to fight because it makes polar-minded people who are more reliant on polar-making "saviors."

I suggest we listen to nature, follow the tiger's lead and stop fighting over the postponement of our demise. I'll be the tiger. You be the boar. Let's have a beer.

None of this means we give up. It just means we should find one or two amazing causes and support it. Support those who have PROVEN to do good in the world, with minimal cost. I wouldn’t count on Big Gov and the Epsteins of the world to save us. Big Gov is not a substitute for charity. Find a cause and support it … fiscally.

I think saving the rainforest and anti-war movements are of the utmost importance, but there’s a bunch of brilliant ideas below to choose from. Pick one or two.

#GoodNews

Headlines of Hope v20

Medical breakthroughs

FDA Approves Opioid-free Pain Medication That Finally Delivers Relief Without Addiction

Fighting Cancer Without Fighting: Scientists in Korea Switch Tumor Cells Back to Healthy Ones at ‘Critical’ Moment

World’s Smallest Heart Pump ‘A Game-changer’ in Keeping Failing Hearts Going Without Major Surgery. Keith Richards *Will* Live Forever

10-year-old Deaf Girl Is Blown Away with New Caption Glasses That Let Her “See” Spoken Words

Headlines of Hope v19

Undoing the damage

Dutch Bringing Back Risky Play–in Parks Where Kids Climb, Sword-fight with Sticks and Build with Hammers. Teachers Afraid that they Might Have Fun

Prisons Across the World Are Shaving Days Off Sentences for Every Book Read by Their Inmates

Big Oil Shares Data Maps to Unlock Fresh Drinking Water for Millions of Africans

Industrial Pollution Uses Coal to Convert Toxic Heavy Metals into Essential Nutrients We Consume in Supplements

90% of All Power Grid Additions in America During 2024 Were Renewable–Solar Alone Made up 80%

New Technology Lights Up Coral Beds to Speed Reef Restoration By Attracting Microscopic Food that the Coral Feasts Upon

How ‘Frozen Zoos’ Are Helping Save Vanishing Species

Frozen zoos a.k.a. Cryogenic banks have been storing genetic material for 50 years. At first, the nerds had no idea why they were storing dead skin cells at -320°F, but somehow they knew it was important. Come to find out, it's helped to bring back (clone) critically endangered animals like the undomesticated Przewalski’s horse, an Indian Guar, the Banteng, and the black-footed ferret.

The geeks are gonna save us all. They recently created edible tortilla tape to keep wraps wrapped nice and snug, so you better be nice to the nerds or they might tape you up and feed their cloned Velociraptors.

#BreakfastBurritos

Headlines of Hope v18

Brain surgeons harness light therapy to target and kill cancer cells

The light-activated therapy forces cancer cells to glow in the dark, helping surgeons both find and remove tumors – and then kills off remaining cells within minutes after surgery. Trials with mice have zapped the most common and aggressive types of brain cancer!!! Experts believe it is destined to become the world’s fifth major cancer treatment and the world's first major electronic dance party in the brain. One neurosurgeon admits, "Sometimes we crank up the dubstep and it gets a little crazy."

‘Dancing molecules’ successfully repair severe spinal cord injuries

After a single injection, paralyzed mice regained their ability to walk within four weeks. Basically, tiny nanofibers "dance" in the spinal cord which increases the chance of reacting with cell receptors floating by. The reaction then uses peptides to tell the damaged spine to start repairing. Nothing has been able to do this up until now. This used to be sci-fi.

Red Light Therapy Could Improve Eyesight After Declining Due to Age

Gazing into a deep-red (infrared) light for three minutes was found to significantly improve color vision in those suffering from failing eyesight.

Mature Trees Will Increase CO2 Absorption By a Third in Response to Raised Levels of Carbon on Earth, Study Shows

Most CO2 From Australia’s Megafires Has Been Offset by Algal Blooms Formed By Ash That Settled in the Ocean

Solar-Powered Desalination Device Will Turn Sea Water Into Fresh Water For 400,000 People

Washington, DC Sewage Plant Spins Human Poo into Fertilizer Gold

#Pooyeah!

Headlines of Hope v17

The Perfect Energy Source Is Already Here

Endless Geothermal Is Poised for Release From Deep in the Earth

As physicists work in the nuclear fusion sector to unlock limitless clean energy, they inadvertently invented a tool that could allow geothermal plants to deliver limitless clean energy.

That tool is a large laser drill that can bore 12 miles into the Earth’s crust to harness the heat from our planet’s core which is then converted to other forms of energy we can use.

We've almost cracked the nut y'all. In terms of human knowledge, every day we're waking up to the best day the earth has ever known. And tomorrow will be a little better. Every moment of every day, you are the youngest you will ever be. Meditate on that.

3D-printed ear …

… is made and transplanted from patient’s living cells. What a headline! This procedure has been long theorized, but never carried out at this scale. Previous 3D prints involved silicon prosthetics, but in this case, stem cells were nestled in a “bioink” of collagen, shipped in iced coolers, then inserted under the patient’s skin. The model is reconstructed according to a precise 3-dimensional model of the other ear so when the print grows, both ears look identical.

This eliminates the embarrassment of having a deformed ear, but also restores hearing in most cases since the 3D-printed ear is 100% living.

The near future may not be able to print complex organs like a liver yet, but simpler, collagen-rich tissues like the spinal disc, rotator cuffs, meniscus, etc will be possible. It's not an “if” anymore, but "when."

Listening to Music With a Groove Actually Boosts Brain Function

It's known that upbeat music can make you run faster, but now researchers believe it enhances brain function. But ... it has to be music with a groove that makes you want to move lol. It's true. It has to "move" you, literally. This is what I'll text my neighbors when they complain after I crank up the outside surround sound to 11. "Shut up. I'm making you smarter!"

Scientists use sound to destroy half of liver tumors – and boosted immune systems cleared away the rest.

In a related story, scientists discover that Nickelback is actually the cause of liver tumors.

#GoodSoundSaves

Headlines of Hope v16

Paralyzed Patient Can Now Write as Fast as Smartphone By ‘Mindwriting’ With Brain Signals

A Single Injection Reverses Blindness in Patient with Rare Genetic Disorder – Another RNA Success

Fog-Catching Towers Could Supply Water to the World’s Driest Megacity Using The Ocean Air

After Massive Wildfires, DroneSeed is Replanting Forests 6x Faster By Using Special Drones

Scientists can now grow tiny working livers from skin cells

Virginia Joins 20 Other States Banning Ticket Quotas For Traffic Cops

Cheap Gel Packs Can Pull Many Liters of Water, Even From Desert Air

Roads are Lasting Twice as Long Thanks to Recycled Tire Rubber

Urban Forests Create a Birdlife Boom in New Zealand Cities – Even Species Absent for Generations

Headlines of Hope v15

Most advanced artificial heart approved for sale in Europe, raising hope for those awaiting transplants

Billionaire "Shark's" new drug company produces low-cost generic drugs CUTTING 90% OF THE MARKUP!!!

The "Tank's" billionaire Mark Cuban basically created a Dallas buyers club with no hidden costs or middlemen. Built their company on radical transparency; constructing a facility in Dallas where they'll sell cures for rare diseases directly to patients. Offering 100's of new drugs in the near future.

And it'll have the compounding effect of injecting an overdose of free market competition into the veins of a monopoly in which competitors die on the vine while millions of sick people cry for alternatives. Big pharma will finally get a taste of their own medicine: force. They'll have to cut prices to compete.

... and things are changing.

First person to get an artificial cornea gains sight

78-year-old dude woke up and was staring at his fam, even passed the classic eye exam from a distance!

The implant actually merges with human tissue and colonizes collagen (protein) and other cells that rebuild the damaged cornea. Sounds crazy but the doc said the surgery was "straight forward [ ... ] done with ease." No big d. Just another run of the mill groundbreaking day in science. Many others are in line, waiting to see for the first time. It's like opening a door on the dark side of the moon and walking into the Wizard of Oz color scene.

Previously "incurable" Multiple Sclerosis is likely a thing of the past and "necessity" (or COVID in this case) is the mother of invention.

The same tech behind the C-19 vax is leading researchers to a major MS breakthrough.

Basically labs use a giant machine to genetically engineer messenger RNA. This mRNA tells cells to build proteins with a small little snip of the actual virus. It isn't enough to infect you so mRNA turns your cells into a factory creating "diseased" proteins that your immune system then attacks. It basically trains your body to be a COVID killer. This clever trick is a medical revolution, primed to cure not only viruses but thousands of, up to this point, incurable disorders ... like multiple sclerosis.

In this case the mRNA doesn't tell cells to create proteins with diseased snippets. Instead the auto-antigen encoded within the mRNA helps the immune system tolerate MS-related proteins which not only halts the progression of the disease, but RESTORES lost motor function in mice. It reverses paralysis y'all. Let that sink in.

Dude who founded BioNTech originally wanted to use mRNA for cancer immunotherapy, but the pandemic happened and he switched gears. The floodgates have opened. Cancer's inside the bullseye now and initial trials are promising.

Headlines of Hope v14

What corporate media didn't tell you today ...

As Incarceration Rate Falls, U.S. Prisons Are Being Repurposed into Homeless Shelters, Farms – Even Movie Studios

To Keep Pain in Check, Scientists Say ‘Count Down’

If you count down from 1000 in 7-second increments, your brain sort of says "I hate you," and forgets the pain. I've done it and it instantly squashed the stabbing tendonitis pain in my heel. Meditation or prayer works too. Google the headline for other techniques.

UK Opens its First Geothermal Plant Using Heat From the Earth to Power 10,000 Homes

They mix water with red hot rocks three miles deep and voila. Wind and solar like to take naps, but geothermal never sleeps ... and it's green. That means 24/7 energy my friends. Why fight now when the near future is going to solve massive problems that are dividing us today. Stay untuned ... from polar sides that split society into tribal hate.

Researchers Pull Carbon Out of the Sky And Convert it to Instant Jet Fuel, Reshaping Aviation For Good

Global warming sucks, so why not just suck the warming part out of the air? Brilliant.

This City’s Police Force Says No Officer Fired a Single Shot in 2020

Newark, NJ police de-escalation training worked. Not one officer fired a weapon while on duty in 2020. At least all these terrible tragedies weren't in vain. The world is awakening.

Separately …

Massive Illinois Police Reform Bill Ends Cash Bail, Limits Deadly Force, Mandates Body Cameras, and Makes It Easier To Dump Crooked Cops

Adidas to Launch Plant-Based Shoes Made of Mushroom Leather To Top 60% Sustainability For All Products

It's a race between mushrooms and robots to save the planet. Mushrooms are the new plastic, but biodegradable ... and chewable. Couch-sized fungi eat oil spills for breakfast and "poop" out the origins of life (literally ... mushrooms came first). They're the one and only ingredient in some highly potent flu viruses. If magic exists, they're inside mushrooms and I'm not talking about psilocybin. They truly have extraordinary super powers.

Morbid curiosity and anger drive more reactions on social media than all the other emotions. It's a survival trick that our brains haven't evolved out of because being alert to danger used to be paramount. But given that we no longer wake up wondering if we'll survive the day, we could probably give our fears a back seat and consciously choose not to be berated by bad news — to balance our emotions with the good.

Scientists successfully repaired injured spinal cords using patients’ own stem cells!

After losing motor function from spinal cord injuries, over half of the patients were able to walk or use hands within weeks of the injection. No major side effects.

#Science

Headlines of Hope v13

Another Study Shows Psychedelic Psilocybin Mushrooms Offering Long-Term Relief From Depressive Symptoms

Washington DC, the place where we make all the laws in the land, just decriminalized magic mushrooms. 76% of their voters supported it. They join Denver; Oakland, Santa Cruz and beautiful Ann Arbor. Ponder that.

Common Weed Stops the Growth of Breast Cancer Cells, Scientists in London Report

Maybe we should stop calling them weeds. It's all subjective. Many weeds eventually flower.

Scientists Discover Simple Supplement That Causes Prostate Cancer Cells To Self-Destruct

Not vitamin K specifically, but a precursor called menadione. The simple OTC supplement was found in a recent trial to make tumor cells explode.

Tech Startup Can Now Brew Up Carbon-Negative Rocket Fuel by Capturing CO2 Emissions From the Air

New Study Shows Garden Areas Improved the Immune Systems of Daycare Children in Only a Month

Kids need to roll around in the dirt, not bathe in antibacterial soap everyday; something doctors say will have the unintended consequence of creating super germs that will be resistant to our futile efforts.

I'm not saying we bring back the 3-second rule, but maybe we make trade schools free and encourage hard work and dirty jobs. Americans, Hollywood, our society has taught kids that these jobs are below their dignity, that they're for immigrants, for the others. These jobs are actually in low supply, high demand, pay really well and make a lot of people happy and whole.

Because we haven't evolved out of liking hard work. It satiates something primordial in us all that subconsciously remembers how hard it was to survive thousands of years ago. That feeling of conquering death, being outside, feeling all the feels, living life … is exhilarating.

Headlines of Hope v12

Underwater Roomba-Like Robots Helping Humans Will Never Run Out of Power Thanks to New Mobile Docking Station

So these drones (called WaterSharks) go into city waterways, collect garbage and then return on their own to charge. One company is using this technology to collect plastic waste from the ocean. Then turn the garbage into designer sunglasses, selling them for $100 a pop. As a result, they're projecting that the giant Pacific Garbage patch (the biggest trash pit in all our oceans) will be clean in 10 years. Same dude is taking that tech and cleaning up the world’s rivers too. Don't you just hate capitalism? $100 shades are way too expensive to save the planet.

The robots also collect data about the environment, assess water quality levels, search for chemicals following industrial spills, help with search and rescue, etc etc. These robots will eventually take over and destroy us all if we're not careful. That's the "etc" part. Yikes!

Headlines of Hope v11

Solar is Now the Cheapest Electricity in History and Just Met 100% of Demand in South Australia For First Time

Topping Soil With Rock Dust Could Suck Billions of Tons of CO2 From the Air and Increase Crop Nutrients–Study

Howling With Joy: After 45 Years The Gray Wolf Has Successfully Been Lifted Off the US Endangered Species List

Venice’s Inflatable Floodgates–Named After Moses–Saves City for the Second Time

Giant Floating Balloons Will Bring Internet Access to 20,000 Square Miles in Remote Kenya

Over-the-Counter Ibuprofen Can Speed Up Recovery From Concussion By 20%, Shows Study

Headlines of Hope v10

Neurobiologists Can Now Reverse Stroke Damage Using Human Skin Cells

It actually restored mobility and sense of touch in the animal models. They're also restoring eyesight in mice with previously irreversible macular degeneration.

Autonomous Cars Are Now Delivering Meals and Medication to At-Risk People in Quarantine

Researchers Make Plants That Glow Continuously—And They Could One Day Light Up Our Homes

... thanks to a gene found in mushrooms, scientists can now make plants glow in the dark. Mom's all over the world rejoice as toddlers finally start eating their spinach ... so they can make glow-in-the-dark poop.

Kenyan Scientists Discover Natural Microbe That Completely Stops Malaria in Mosquitoes

Because every 60 seconds in Africa a minute passes. One minute just passed while you were reading this. Ok, seriously, this is actually a huge breakthrough for Africa.

#LifeSaver

Headlines of Hope v9

Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimated to Fall by 8% in 2020 — the Largest Recorded Drop in History

Survey Finds Working From Home Has So Many Benefits, 48% of Workers Would Take Pay Cut to Continue

Because petting your dog releases oxytocin. You're basically getting high every time you scratch your dog's butt.

Thanks to Covid, companies around the world are saving millions from work-at-home policies. I just got word that my office is closing down. WAHOOOO!

Headlines of Hope v8

Natural Organisms in Soil Can Power Lights With This Bio Battery

Unemployed Single Women in Zanzibar Are Saving Fish and Making Money by Farming Sea Sponges

Civilization has hit a milestone recently where people with very little control over their lives can up and do things like become a sponge farmer and create a brighter future. Ponder that. Your world just got brighter at the precise moment that some lady in Zanzibar realized there was hope.

Bionic Eye, As Sensitive as The Human Retina, May Give Sight to Millions

In the case where they're only blind on one side, the robotic prosthetic eye can even improve the vision of the other human eye.

Incredible. It’s hard to find words.

In spite of our differences, there's a whole world out there solving problems which will soon leave us wondering what's left to bitch about.

Headlines of Hope v7

New Study Says Infrared Lasers Destroy Harmful Plaques in Alzheimer’s Brains

8-Year-old Boy Sees Stars for the First Time as Blindness is Treated With Gene Therapy

Great News For Tiger Populations Surging in India and Discovered in Thailand – On World Tiger Day 2020

Tigers are making a remarkable comeback in Bhutan, Nepal, Thailand, Russia, and China—but India, in particular, is where tiger populations have doubled.

Designing New Forests to Cure California’s Wildfire Curse

Previously it was thought that planting a million pines in lines would prevent wildfire because the lack of sunlight would hinder undergrowth (or fuel for fires). Instead it just increased the effects of drought because trees had to compete for water, so then the closely packed dried up trees just created an abundance of fuel that our fine government overlords were trying to reduce in the first place (fire place?) ... so now they're going back to planting a diverse array of trees much farther apart, which is how mother earth designed it a long time ago.

Lesson? Don't f@#$ with nature. Also, Native Americans had controlled burning down to a science, so we should probably hire their ecologists to help restore balance.

Scientists Create Transparent Wood Nearly As Clear as Glass To Make Stronger, Better Insulating Windows

Wood Scraps Turned into Bulletproof, Fire-Resistant Superwood That’s ‘Stronger Than Steel’

The world is getting better friends. May not seem like it, but open your eyes. It should be clear as wood.

Headlines of Hope v6

• Solar-Powered Panels Pull Water Out of the Air For Navajo Families Who Have None

• Hungarian Scientist Wins €1 Million Prize For Groundbreaking Research That Could Eventually Restore Sight in Blindness

• World’s Biggest Rooftop Greenhouse in Montreal is as Big as 3 Football Fields – Now Can Feed 2% of the City

• These Giant Oil Companies Are Providing EV Chargers Next to Their Gas Pumps

• Breakthrough For Spinal Cord Injuries and Dementia as Protein Builds ‘Striking’ Repairs

• This Man Learned Robotics on YouTube, Now He’s Creating Affordable 3D Prosthetics For Others

• With No Male Northern White Rhinos Left, 10 Viable Eggs Offer Hope For the Species Through Embryo Transfer

• A ‘Momentous Milestone’: Africa Finally Eradicates the Wild Polio Virus From its Continent, After Decades of Work

• Real-Life Willy Wonka Gives Away Candy Factory In Giant Treasure Hunt

• Possible Breakthrough in Alzheimer’s Research: ‘Love Drug’ Oxytocin Found to Reverse Damage in Mice Brains
  

Headlines of Hope v5

2-Acre Vertical Farm Produces More Than ‘Flat Farms’ That Are Using 720 Acres

A new ag-tech farm called Plenty uses 95% less water, because it's recycled and cool buildings reduce evaporation. This means we get our Colorado river back and Brazil has no excuse to burn the rainforest for farmland.

Skyscraper farms of the future will also free‌ ‌agriculture‌ ‌from‌ ‌the‌ ‌constraints‌ ‌of‌ ‌weather,‌ ‌seasons,‌ ‌time,‌ ‌distance,‌ ‌pests and natural‌ ‌disasters. Whoa ... just give me a sec to chew on that. No pests = no more chemicals = no more Monsanto = all organic. My brain almost exploded, but carry on.

And because vertical farms grow in cities instead of in the middle of nowhere, reductions in transportation chains will eliminate millions of tons of CO2 every year. These reductions in time and space will kill another bird (I've lost count of all the birds we've killed with this one homing stone) as the price of food will also be significantly cut down … OK, time out! Pause. A moment of silence please.

The End

... of world hunger

... and poverty

... and a bunch of other stupid birds. Btw, Dodo birds were not stupid. They were too friendly or lacked a proper fear for humans which was the real cause of their demise.

BONUS ROUND!

Researchers Make Biodegradable Tableware From Sugar and Bamboo So it Will Be As Cheap as Plastic

What will these innovations eventually solve? Climate? Check. Plastic waste? Check. World Hunger? Next problem. Fighting the other side ad nauseum? Sorry, dumb question. We'll never solve the problem of being human.

Nuclear Thorium Reactor Means We Don’t Need to Enrich Uranium to Earth-Annilating Grades

Benefits of Thorium Reactors:

• Thorium is 3–4 times more abundant in Earth’s crust than uranium.

• Extracts more energy per ton of fuel compared to uranium, meaning less mining and waste.

• Waste products from thorium reactors decay within 300 years, compared to tens of thousands of years for spent uranium.

• Designed as molten salt reactors (MSRs), which operate at atmospheric pressure, reducing risk of explosions.

• MSRs are fail-safe: if overheated, the fuel can drain into a cooled tank, stopping the reaction automatically.

So countries like Iran can still have a Nuclear POWER program minus the nuclear bombs. BOOM!!!

Headlines of Hope v4

The End of Disease?

First serious clinical study on humans using gene therapy cures genetic blood disease

Previously, patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) had to get blood transfusions every 3 to 8 weeks or else suffer through pain, organ damage and strokes. After one CRISPR treatment, they've been free of both transfusions and symptoms for more than a year.

Researchers basically edit stem cells and put them back in the brain. Afterwards, patients produce healthy red blood cells for the first time in their lives.

A few weeks ago I covered a story about CRISPR annihilating previously incurable cancers in mice. MIT/Harvard biologists estimate that these new achievements could tackle nearly 90% of the 75K DNA-related diseases.

This is just the beginning.

#TheGoodNewsNetwork

HUGE game changer in medicine

CRISPR can now flip genes off and then back on. It's all wild and scary, but on the bright side, there's now a big bullseye on rare incurable disease.

So real-time evolution is undeniable science today. Previously thought to take 10's of thousands of years, we now know that genes can morph instantly. The coloration of the owls adapted to warming winters in Finland. Lizards in FL quickly became more "sticky" when a large influx of predators moved in. And it's all observable as offspring inherit certain genes that are turned on or off.

Now scientists can mimic this natural process (methylation) to flip our scripts. I've a link in the comments if you care for the "how." But diseases that rely on single genes to proliferate could simply be turned off. So the gene responsible for creating the "plaque" (Tau protein) associated with Alzheimers could be silenced for 450 generations.

Similarly, many cancers and extremely rare disorders that have 0 cures and 0 dollars to find them could have 0 effect on humans in the near future ... or at least for mice and animals who kindly help us understand the safety for humans.

Headlines of Hope v4

Scientists Discover Psychedelic-Like Drug That Doesn’t Cause Hallucinations

This would help people who want therapy without seeing purple dragons in the sky. Not that there's anything wrong with purple dragons in the sky, but it could also be terrifying … for the inexperienced psychonaut.

• Could Electromagnetic Fields Treat Diabetes? These Scientists Think So

• Robot That Performs Colonoscopy Set to Make the Procedure Simpler, Cheaper, and More Effective

• Scientists Hack Photosynthesis to Make Crops Produce More, But With Less Water

• Kevin Costner’s New Road Trip App Tells History Stories Tailored Exactly to the Places You Are Driving Through

It's just the beginning, friends. Science will save us, no matter how stupid and powerful the masters of the universe are.

Headlines of Hope v3

• Duke U. Announce The First Cartilage-Mimicking Gel! Strong Enough For Bad Knees

• Engineers Developed a Way to Convert Harmful CO2 Emissions into Chemical Building Blocks For Fuel

• Tiny Forests Are Springing Up All Around Europe, Inspired By Japan, to Help Restore Biodiversity

• They Recycle Electronics – And People’s Lives – By Giving Ex-Felons Good Jobs to Imagine a Better World

• Robot arms with video cams are performing surgeries better than humans can

We can weather this thing together. Plenty to fight about, but I think science and our goodwill is more powerful.

Headlines of Hope v2

College Students Invent Device That Curbs Microplastics Emitted From Tires

... because tire particles are the second-largest microplastic pollutants in our streams, rivers and oceans.

Scientists Discover a New Way to Save Endangered Baby Sea Turtles Using GPS

It also helps them trace the illegal market of selling endangered turtle eggs. Boom. GPS to the rescue.

• Low Ambient Light Indoors Can Be Harvested to Charge Electronics

• Scientists Create ‘Super Enzyme’ That Eats Plastic Bottles Six Times Faster than Previous Enzymes

• The World Achieves its Target to Protect More Land, Adding 42%—the Size of Russia—in Last Decade

• Scientists Partially Restore Vision in Blind Man Using Emerging Technique and Genes from Light-Sensitive Algae

• Leonardo DiCaprio Announces a $43 Million Pledge to Save the Galápagos Islands

• Island Paradise Created for Digital Nomads is a Village With Free Wifi and Workspace

• U.S. DEA is Finally Allowing Companies to Grow Their Own Cannabis for Scientific Research

• Browser Extension Helps You Choose Amazon Products Based on Sustainability

• New Tech Makes Perishable Food Last For Months Without a Fridge, Helping Farmers and the Planet

• New Shipping Material Made From Popcorn Can Replace Styrofoam ‘Peanuts’

• Scientists Develop Personalized Anti-Cancer Vaccine That Works in Mice

• Landmark Malaria Vaccine is 77% Effective, Tackling One of World’s Biggest Killers of Young Children

Nigerian Entrepreneur Invents Giant Solar-Powered Refrigerators That Cut Spoilage to Help Farmers Earn 25% More

Can't wait for Africa to grow me a big fat steak that doesn't spoil. Seriously, it's a thing. Scientists can grow meat now. No joke. In fact, they're really close to growing perfectly symmetrical and balanced boobs, which begs the ethical question, “Should humans play God?” and, more importantly, “Are they real?”

After 3,000 Years, Tasmanian Devils Make a Comeback on Mainland Australia

Bla blaabdy bla bla blblbththth!!! Any Looney Toons fans out there?

A Vaccine To Save The Bees: New Treatment Provides Immunity From Certain Pesticides

Bee Populations Are Increasing in Many States–With Maine Seeing 70% Rise in 2 Years

Basic supply and demand folks. Low supply = high demand = high prices for any entrepreneur who wants to swoop in and help save the bees.

Headlines of Hope v1

‘Mr. Trash Wheel’ Gobbles Up 15 Tons of Trash Every Day From Harbors – And More Cities Are Adopting

Revolutionary CRISPR-based Genome Editing System Destroys Cancer Cells ‘Permanently’ in Lab

Gene editing can now kill the worst forms of aggressive cancers. They targeted the two deadliest: brain and ovarian cancers, which have no effective treatments today.

The study demonstrated that a single treatment with CRISPR doubled the average life expectancy of mice with brain cancer and boosted the overall survival rate of ovarian cancer by 80%!

Molecular-based treatments like this specifically attack cancer cells — nothing else. Chemotherapy wrecks everything in its path, but this treatment has zero known side effects and edited cancer cells will never become active again.

The study opens numerous possibilities for treating other cancers, as well as rare genetic and chronic diseases such as AIDS, muscular dystrophy, etc.

Take a breath

Wasn’t that nice? You can do that any time you like. Half the oxygen you just took in was brought to you by whale poop … because that’s what feeds algae.

Algae's in your ice cream to prevent ice crystals from forming, in chocolate milk to keep cocoa suspended, in toothpaste ... cause why not?

Our brains are dependent on the iodine and omega-3 oils that algae contain. Some scientists attribute the expansion of the hominid brain to algae-eating fish.

The Navy runs ships and planes on non-polluting fuel made from the oils in algae. If the price of fossil fuels was commensurate with the cost of their environmental damage, we would be flying jets on algae fuel. The price of algae fuel is going down rapidly though, so it may not be a distant reality.

Algae is also an amazing biomass for fertilizers and most recently, it powers solar panels (which will replace a lot of rare earth minerals that take an insane amount of energy to mine).

I just need to get an underwater algae garden and a little Octopus pal to play with.

'Miraculous’ Mosquito Hack Cuts Dengue Disease Rate by 77%

Dengue or “Break-bone fever” is spread through the West Nile mosquito and causes severe joint and muscle pain. 100 to 400 million people are infected yearly and can put someone out of commission for a month.

But, by harnessing the mosquito's own plague, Wolbachia bacteria, is now helping Indonesia drop rates of infection by 77%.

• Scientists Created a Mint That Whitens Teeth (Better Than Gels) And Rebuilds Tooth Enamel at the Same Time

• ‘Game-Changing’ Skin Printer Works Like a Paint Roller, Speeding Up Healing on Even Bigger Wounds

• Scientists Find Half the World’s Fish Stocks Are Recovered—or Increasing—in Oceans That Used to Be Overfished

• New Device Can Power 100 Small LED Lights Simply By Harnessing the Energy of a Single Water Droplet

• Honda is Designing an Ingenious In-Shoe Navigation System For The Visually Impaired

• Huge Supply of Water is Saved From Evaporation When Solar Panels Are Built Over Canals

• This Single Tree Could Restore Degraded Land, Create a Biofuel Revolution, Power Cars, and Feed Families
  

Smelling Your Lover’s Shirt Could Improve Your Sleep As Much as Sleeping Aids

People who slept with their romantic partner's t-shirt were shown to improve sleep quality on par with sleep supplements such as melatonin.

True story. When Melina rests her head on my chest, she's out in minutes. Otherwise insomnia gets the best of her.

New Study Finds Probiotics Dramatically Reducing the Symptoms of Depression.

This new research paper published in the Nutrition journal found that 8 weeks of probiotic supplements significantly reduced depressive symptoms.

Underwater ‘Kites’ Are Generating Tidal Electricity As They Move

The Faroe Islands have plenty of sky, but little sun; plenty of wind, but little land. So then what? Enter giant Sea Dragon kites. Their ocean-powered turbines will run half the homes on the island. Boom. Next problem.

Youth Hailed for Providing Renewable Energy to 10,000 People Without Using Battery, Wind, Sun, or Water

Because wind and sun aren't always available, but people are always moving, so Dude turned kinetic energy from cars into power through this incredible new [yada yada] and NOW many people in Sierra Leone can, for the first time, have light at night and internet and ... drum roll batabatabatabata:

#Education! #Evolving

Once Biologically Dead, London’s River Thames Rebounds – With Seahorses and Seals

Things are getting better. Turn off the fear mongering and tap into the light. Literally. I'm not just being metaphorical. Massive depression is a real thing for people who live in Portland, Seattle and the Northwest. Because their weather blocks the Sun which is an important factor in all kinds of hormonal fluctuations, vitamin D, etc..

Which begs the question. What does that mean for getting up early and out into the light? Well, turns out …

1 extra hour of sleep and getting out in the sun really does dramatically lower depression.

One theory is that light triggers all sorts of hormonal chain reactions that literally make your day brighter, spiritually and mentally that is. So sleeping in is good if you're going to bed early enough. Waking up (or getting up) at noon is cutting into your light, your God-source? maybe ... that fills us up with energy. There's a time for darkness, but not when light's happening.

Artificial photosynthesis in the dark is now 18x more efficient

… than growing food with actual sunshine outside. Once this tech ramps up, it could mean that one day, we’ll grow food inside spacecrafts or skyscrapers where crops are free from pests, insects, chemicals, drought, seasons, climate change, etc. Once this is built to scale, farms can be vertically built in cities and everywhere. Food prices will drop because the farm will be the grocery store. No shipping. Produce will be bigger, better, organic, picked fresh, etc.

Granted, this is done in the lab and it'll probably be awhile before it's cost efficient, but this is a good taste of our future.

Tap into TheGoodNewsNetwork

I don’t work for these people. I just love them like family. Add GNN to your daily RSS feed or whatever app you use to consume media. You'll thank me later when the world looks like a beautiful place again — like when you were a young child and you were in awe of everything. When things like earthworms and tree roots were still amazing and everything you could touch and feel was a toy. You can still be young at heart. Connect with nature. Connect with people.

The Great Lie

The great lie was that the web would connect us. So we poured all the knowledge of the world into it – and got echo chambers full of duck faces in return. This massive shift had a profound effect on society.

We could wait for a full societal reset to undo the damage, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. The Gen Z Stares will probably procrastinate that as well.

So change yourself – one day at a time.

4 daily wins:

1. Walk, lift, run.

2. Read, write, create.

3. Think, study, meditate.

4. Talk, laugh, love – with someone.

Connect!

Meetup.com is a website and app used for people to meet up around hobbies, nature, dancing, anything you can imagine (especially if you live near a big city). It's sooooo much better than dating apps because people meet up in groups. There's no pressure to buy weirdos dinner, only to find out later that they stole your forks when you weren’t looking.

People naturally gravitate towards people in the group that they like. They play games, forage for mushrooms, learn a language together, do all kinds of cool shit!

Peaceful Parenting

If you liked this, check out my manifesto on Peaceful Parenting. It’s my small contribution to world peace — a cause that I hope you get behind.

Pick a cause

Consider sending a monthly or yearly donation to something you love. Do it today!

Love.

And be the kind of person who is loved.

One of my favorite adventures began with an unexpected call from a guy who I had met a few months back.

“Wait, who are you? Adam? […] Oh right. The show. Yeah, it was kinda fuzzy.” Come to find out, he had just bought a ticket to Bonnaroo but didn’t have a car.

Fun Friday

I wasn’t planning to go to Bonnaroo this summer, let alone in two hours as Adam suggested, but Fate must have a sense of humor, because my colleagues threw a Muppet-themed “Fun Friday” that very day. I had gone to work sporting a white lab coat, googly-eye glasses, a big orange clown nose, orange face paint, and bright orange hair.

Not only did Adam correctly peg me for a festivalgoer, he also happened to catch me on a day when Jim Henson would have rolled in his grave if he found out that Beaker turned down Bonnaroo.

Quick rewind: When we were kids, my sisters, Amber and Willow, used to tease me because I had a high squeaky voice. “Alright, Beaker! We hear you … shut up!” So when Adam asked if I was going to Bonnaroo, what else could I say but “MEEP MEEP!!!”

For those of you who don’t speak Beakonese, that translates to “HELL YEAH!!!”

Even Mrs. Beaker agreed that the Universe had spoken, so I stuffed a few essentials into my oversized lab coat pockets (small spray bottle, Scotch tape, a pocket knife) and took off.

It was about an hour drive before we rolled into Manchester. I couldn’t go to the main gate because I didn’t have a ticket, so we turned into a driveway nearby. As we pulled up, an older couple — retired maybe — greeted us from their rocking chairs on the porch where they were enjoying the sunset. They looked like nice country folks. Adam waved hello as I rolled down my window and greeted the neighbors.

“Meep Meep!”

It took a second, but the old feller squinted hard, then rocked his head back and exploded. He wheezed hard as he exhaled; a laugh that sounded as funny as my stupid face looked.

After we all regained composure, Adam jumped in. “What my friend was trying to say, is that we’re looking for a place to park for a few days.” The old man didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely! Right over there would be fine.” The neighbors were charging 30 bucks per day, but when I asked if we could pony up, the man wouldn’t have it. “Oh stop. What good is your Muppet money?”

Bright Orange Camouflage

At that point, we split up. Adam headed for the entrance, and Beaker for the back door. Festival staff were everywhere, driving around in golf carts, on patrol for idiots like me. The bright white lab coat and orange hair didn’t make for the greatest camo, so I was ducking for cover, dashing from ditch to ditch, avoiding flashlight beams.

Thankfully, there was a farm up ahead where I took refuge. I trekked through a couple of fields before entering a wooded area with big evergreens blocking out the Bonnaroo lights. Suddenly, a loud “RRRRIBIT!!!” stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Hmm … bullfrogs usually live by water.” At that moment, my eyes adjusted to the night and I realized that my next step would have landed my ass off a ledge into a slimy pond. I would have sludged back to the car and driven home in shame if it had not been for my little green guardian.

It was a good omen. So I walked around the pond, through the woods, right into the campground I’d been aiming for.

“Aces.”

After a few phone calls, I got a hold of some friends. They had a giant lifesize Batman figure on top of their camper, so it was easy to find. These guys were die-hard fans, part of the InfoRoo community, the festival’s online forum where people discuss pro tips, afterparties, and where to find … how do I put it? … fun ways to feel smarter and better looking than they really are.

My friends were all flipping out over me showing up on a whim as Beaker. We hung out for a bit, but I was eager to see Ice Cube. He was about to go on, and there was still the business of breaking into the festival grounds.

The festival wall was too tall to climb, so I took off and walked around the perimeter looking for ideas. Then I saw her, yet another friend, growing in the perfect spot. But her lowest limb was about 12 feet off the ground. So I turned sideways and shimmied up between the fortress wall and the trunk of the old oak, until I could wrap my hands around a branch and hoist myself up. From there, it was an easy climb over the fence where I dropped down.

Once on my feet, I saw giant excavators and bulldozers everywhere.

Beaker: “MEEP!!!”
Bulldozer: “Hey! Watch your mouth.”
Beaker: “Uh-oh!”

Someone from InfoRoo must have spiked the punch. It was probably Batman. He doesn’t have any real superpowers. Probably came to Bonnaroo to score some performance enhancers. No wonder he thinks he can fly.

Jack White’s Green Room

After weaving around a maze of machinery, I came to another fence with a long line of campers on the other side. It was chain linked, so I could easily climb up and over. Or so I thought. About five feet up, the whole thing caved forward into the side of an RV. If not for the music blasting inside, I’m sure the occupants would have spilled out to see what the bump was about.

So there I was, teetering atop one wibbly-wobbly fence, leaning against an RV, trying not to get my nuts sliced off, grasping around in the dark for a way to regain balance. Luckily, an air conditioner jutting out provided enough leverage to lift myself up and over the fence.

Now I was in. Across the field, I saw someone playing onstage. I was so excited that I broke character and shouted “Wahooooo!” But my elation quickly faded as my near-vision kicked in and I realized just how many people were staring at me. I wasn’t anywhere near the stage but had barged into the middle of a raging party. Open bar, everybody dressed to the nines … a little too fancy for the occasion. One super-tall dude with jet black hair looked familiar.

“Is that Jack White?” I thought. “It can’t be. OH SHIT!”

I had just stumbled into Bonnaroo’s open-air Green Room where all the artists were getting drunk and schmoozing with celebrity guests. I knew the campground looked entirely too posh. There were far too many feather boas concentrated in one place for these to be normal people. And then there was Beaker, looking as dazed and confused as he would on The Muppet Show after blowing up the lab.

White was looking at me like I was a circus monkey that needed to get on with the act, like an Oompa Loompa who needed to sing his little jig, then disappear through a hidden door.

He had my sympathy. I was seeing all kinds of strange and colorful things myself but could not find any crack in space or time through which to escape. My presence was starting to get awkward for the people in feather boas. I was either paid entertainment or a crazy person.

Suddenly, a figure in black appeared. “Sir?” the man inquired (which I thought was rather gratuitous, considering who I was), “Can I please see your wristband?” Rolling up my sleeve was clearly not an option, so I decided to reciprocate with politeness: “No, thank you. I’m good.” The guy didn’t expect that one. “Stay here. I’m getting my supervisor.”

In a last-ditch effort, I put my hand on the gentleman’s shoulder, leaned in close, and looked directly into his eyes. “Just let me go back to where I came from,” I suggested persuasively, in a low soothing tone. To my surprise, he obligingly repeated, “Just go back to where you came from.”

I totally Obi-Wan Kenobi’d the man in black. I was a golden god! … or copper-faced Muppet on acid. The two are virtually indistinguishable.

Armed with this knowledge, I turned and disappeared whence I came. Only I wasn’t about to climb the wibbly-wobbly fence again, so I skirted along the line of campers, stopping occasionally to listen to the music inside. I had recognized an Avett Brothers song earlier when I crashed into the camper, but realized now that it was the Avett Brothers. They were rehearsing.

Finally, I found the exit to the VIP camp which connected to the main festival grounds. As I beelined through, I put my hand on the bouncer’s arm and said, “I’ll be back,” reassuringly, pointing to his eyes and then to mine as I gave the googly eye glasses a little jiggle. He inaudibly mouthed “What the fuck?”

I never returned, but I wanted him to remember me so I could get back in. Like right before the festival ended, it would have been a fun place to get kicked out … for real.

I must have been the whitest orange person pounding my fist to ’90s gangsta rap. It was totally surreal.

Thirty thousand protesters shouting, in unison, “Fuck tha police!” No one demanded to frisk me. Nobody asked for my wristband either; the lab coat covered the spot where it should have been.

The rest of the night was wild, a blur, like an impressionist landscape painted with fluorescent watercolors. My canvas was alive, with every person enveloped in a warm glow. I don’t remember all the details, but the feelings are ingrained into my subconscious. The freedom to live large in your own little way is a legacy that I hope to pass on.

The next day, I woke up on a blow-up couch, staring up at Batman. He gave me a wink and reassured me that I had made it home safely to the InfoRoo tent. After breakfast and lots of laughter, I took my leave and headed to the campground exit to look for wristbands.

Sure enough, someone forgot to wear sunscreen the day before and was burnt out. The car was fully packed and the driver did not look happy.

I waved him over and asked nicely, “Hey, mind giving me your wristband if you’re not coming back?” The guy said, “Sure” and let me cut the wristband off with my pocket knife. “I’m just glad someone can use it.” I told him his contribution would not go to waste, that we were kin — me from the orange, and he from the red-faced clan.

The Scotch tape in my lab coat pocket came in handy as I put the band back together. This was far from my first rodeo. During my college years, when I was broke, I had perfected the art of sneaking into Bonnaroo.

One time, I literally walked backward through the exit, which consisted of a giant arch with a constant flood of people passing through … in one direction. Every time a staff member looked at me, I started walking forward like I was walking with the crowd. As soon as they looked away, I put myself back in reverse until my ass was in. I got ten bucks for winning that bet.

Baptized in Alien Blood

A few years later, in 2010, the lead singer of GWAR singled me out in the audience with his big black alien penis cannon.

Shortly before production staff rolled the prop out, the crowd had opened up a large circle for me to swirl my Tree of Life tapestry. As I flew by, my cape created a powerful fanning effect that cooled the surrounding crowd. Becoming a Breeze 101. (We’ll come back to that.)

So when the singer for GWAR saw me prancing around out in the open, he turned the cannon and blasted me with a stream of alien penis blood. I mean, it was dark red, so that’s what I’m going with. I’d hate to think I was getting peed on.

Meanwhile, the circle that opened up for me was expanding, to the point that I remember seeing the mosh pit come into view at one end. Shortly after this realization (or warning), out of nowhere, someone ran up from behind and spearheaded me in the back, tackling me to the ground. The spot on my spine where his head hit should have hurt, but the adrenaline was masking the pain.

Clearly, someone thought I was having too much fun and wanted to steal the show. I was slow getting up. People were closing in to fill the space. My circle was coming to an end! The idea of a circle ending crossed my mind and didn’t even sound possible. The rat bastard broke my fucking circle! Then I turned around to find, not a rat, but a bro twice my size, staring down at me, looking more like a bull. And not the sweet flower-sniffer type like Ferdinand.

A Bonnaroo Bullfight

I wanted to be pissed off, but the giant didn’t give me a choice. I knew the only way to beat Muscles was in a meeting of the mind. So I pretended to be a Spanish matador and moved gracefully around the collapsing circle as I twirled my cape, taunting the beast to join me in a dance of death. Surprisingly, he caught on and made horns with his fingers above his forehead. Fully transformed, he started kicking the dirt back with his “hooves,” signaling that a charge was imminent.

“Let’s dance, bitch!”

So we did this whole routine where he chased me down and ran through my cape. All the while a giant stream of alien penis blood was raining down upon us. It was metal as meep! The circle opened back up, but now people had their phones out taking videos.

I’m pretty sure GWAR kept the song going just for us, but at some point, we must have drained that alien penis dry. The band repeated the hook during the final refrain and it all came to an end. This was it. As the bull passed through one last time, my foot was strategically planted just out of sight behind the cape. As the beast ducked under my arms, he tripped and fell forward. There wasn’t enough time to get his hands down off his head, but thankfully for him, his face was there to soften the blow.

“Splat!” … right into a puddle of mud.

The bull got up on all fours. His face besmirched, completely caked in alien penis blood.

I was satisfied, but failed to plan for anything past revenge, let alone the possibility of being gored to death. I should have been dribbling in my pants, but I was still high enough to think it was hilarious.

Dude jumped to his feet and lurched forward. I jumped back, but he had already grabbed a hold of my hand. I wasn’t expecting what came next. With a firm grasp, he simply wiggled my limp arm up and down as if to say, “We’re even.” The gentle beast then pulled me in and gave me two “Well played!” pats on the back before disappearing into the pit to batter someone else’s brains. I was flabbergasted. It was a Bonnaroo miracle. Turns out the big softy had a little Ferdinand in him after all.

After the show, I had groupies who followed me around from one party to the next. I also had a bone bruise on my spine that stuck with me for about five months. One thing’s for sure, I was not built for the pit, but I do like to be front and center.

Becoming a Breeze 101

Which brings us to my last magic trick. If you want to rock out next to the band without having to camp out by the stage for hours, bring a spray bottle full of ice water. The next part is simple: Just spray your way to the front. Moses would have been proud, for a mere Muppet parted a great sea of sweaty men and glistening women. Only, this was no miracle. It was just homeostasis. Hot hippies + cool water = equilibrium.

One lady signaled for more and revealed a few places that needed an extra squirt. She was super hot and needed extra cooling, so I sprayed her entire body down. I didn’t mind the detour (for science, of course). There was lots of homeostasis happening as I parted the Partying Sea.

The crowd practically rolled out the red carpet as I misted my way through. I wasn’t cutting; it was an unspoken understanding. They moaned in ecstasy as I breezed by. I gave them a nod that shook my googly eyes and they giggled from the gut. It was a good deal all around.

This completes Becoming a Breeze 101 for today. Your homework: Take a picture of the band, up close, no zooming. If it’s pixelated you get an F.

The pit is where you’ll find my people. We’re a little crazy-looking, or looking for fun, rather. We’re lovers of loud music. It’s gotta jiggle your innards. You’ll find us swaying together in solidarity. When the sound is especially exhilarating, you might catch us acknowledging the glory by looking directly at each other … eye to googly eye.

Love is a cage with a key
Stuck together. Forever free

Love is pain when one's away
When two hearts separate

Love is learning how to fight
Makin' up with a neck bite

Love is fireworks and confetti
We blow up but float down steadily

Love is when body's meet
When heads won't, but hearts beat ... together

Love is when the kids were seven
Making the radio go to eleven

Love is a lotta strange sounds
Makes 'em feel safe and bound ... together

Love is music, casting spells
Cast 'em right on ourselves

Love is a cage with a key
Stuck together. Forever free

I met Dale Richardson last week while trespassing in his yard.

I’d like to think there was an invitation. It was a “Field of Dreams” kinda thing – a wee Stonehenge, or Hillbilly Henge, as I like to call it. Dale built it and I came.

I found it by accident, detouring around town to avoid a traffic jam. So now, after dropping the kids off at school, I take the long way home. The rolling hills put me in a better headspace and I certainly don't miss the concrete jungle.

I’d see Dale outside doing something to his yard just about every day. “What’s your story?” I kept thinking. I wanted to stop several times, but the light was never quite right. Then last Tuesday, I woke to cirrus clouds feathered across the sky. Sunbeams streamed through the forest into my bedroom. My golden hour was about to vanish with the morning mist, so I dropped the kids off, and hightailed it to the henge.

Dale was on the far side of the yard, cutting squares of sod – transplanting them under a maple tree where years of erosion had washed the grass away. I snapped a few shots before he wandered over.

We never even introduced ourselves – just fell in like old friends, trading stories, seeing who could get the loudest laugh. We talked so long I missed my first call. I wasn't worried. The talking heads could wait.

“What do you do?” Dale asked. I didn’t tell him I was an enterprise banker.

“Well, I like to climb trees and look at the stars. Lately I’ve been learning to play the mouth harp. Makes my meetings go by a little faster. Oh – and I’m still looking for this food truck that I found once. Best burrito ever, but I can’t remember where the truck sits now. Maybe it moved on. Maybe it never even existed.”

It’s all about the chase. Chaos is where fun hides.

Dale didn’t ask what paid the bills. Apparently, my burrito philosophy was an acceptable response. Instead, he launched into a grand tale about retiring as an adult and working full-time as a kid again. Midway through, he shared the origins of Hillbilly Henge.

“Every time I mowed over there by the woods, I’d hit the same darn rock with the deck of my mower. One day I had enough, so I fetched a shovel and started digging.”

He spoke with a half-smile and wink in his eye. As the story unfolded, I pictured the old man walking with a jump and a skip – a modern Dick Van Dyke, marching to the beat of his own drum, defying age. Poetry in motion.

So Dale dug and sweated
Dale dug and swore
Dale dug ’til he couldn’t dig anymore
His Hillbilly Henge isn’t Silverstein lore
It’s all true
I’m just an alliteration whore

Okay, that was uncalled for. My bad. I’ll stop. My parents forced Shel Silverstein on me at a young age, so it’s no wonder I turned to a life of rhyme. See? There it is again. I lied. Can't help it.

We’re cut from the same cloth – Dale and I. Darb and Dale. Manhood never meant that we had to put away childish things. We simply repackaged them. We still dig in the dirt, but our toys grew up to become mighty machines.

There Dale was, digging a four-ton rock out of the ground with a shovel. Most men would stop there, but this kid wasn’t done playing. He had another game in the barn that was louder and more fun. So he rolled out the big guns. He should’ve started with the backhoe, before he broke his back, but he didn't know he was digging up half of Appalachia when he started.

Then a side door swung open from the house. Dale’s better half stepped out and hollered,

“What the heck are you doing to my garden?”

Truth be told, Dale didn’t know himself. He just wanted to see how big the thing was. His backhoe could lift six thousand pounds, but the boulder wasn’t budging. At best, he could nudge one end sideways an inch or two at a time.

“You want me to come inside?” Dale smiled.

“No!” His wife smiled back.

That was the end of the argument. I’ve heard of this phenomenon before. Some older couples fight with such finesse that they both win – without either one admitting it.

So Dale pushed that boulder back and forth, side to side, inch by inch. Five hours later, his machine started making the same sounds Dale had made earlier – the four-letter kind.

“FLNK!”

Fortunately for the backhoe, Dale treats his machines better than his own back. Playtime was over.

At this point, Dale and his big rock were sitting right smack-dab in the middle of the front yard. According to his wife, this is where they would spend most of their time together.

Years passed. More rocks appeared. Smaller ones, softer ones, quartz and granite. None as big as the first, but they were perfect for sitting, shooting the breeze with neighbors and performing sacrificial rituals.

Okay. Nobody was spilling goat’s blood, but you have to admit – it looks like a scene right out of Narnia. You know, the big slab where they tied Aslan up?

Truth be told, Dale and his friends were good God-fearing folk. I can’t say as much about the circle of rocks. They aren't afraid of anything. Inanimate objects don’t have feelings.

Yet, these rocks seemed to whisper something older than language. They stand. STILL. ETERNAL. Newlyweds would occasionally stop by to capture, in a flash, what they hoped to be everlasting love.

Dale dug for a rock and unearthed a monument – a meeting place, a marker of time. Long after we’re dust, those stones will stand, a backyard Hillbilly Stonehenge whispering in silent repose:

“Do not go gentle into that good night
Come play in the chaos
Come chase the light”

Somehow, the scariest night of my life turned into the hardest I’ve ever laughed. That pretty much sums up our wedding and marriage in general … but also last Tuesday.

After watching Aliens, I went to bed and dreamt that I was in this weird Hunger Games competition, last-one-standing kinda thing, only it was set in a shopping mall and we weren't fighting people, just avoiding being mauled by roving gangs of cats. Every variety you can imagine: housecats, bobcats, sabre-tooth tigers. Garfield made a cameo, which really messed me up because he's supposed to make me laugh, not look at me like I’m lasagna.

Anyway, about the time that I hatched a plan to escape, I felt something crawl up my arm. Keep in mind, Aliens had set all this in motion, so I immediately thought it was one of those little face-suckers that run around like Thing from The Addams Family.

Meanwhile, in the real world, something scuttled across my face. I'm talking about a cockroach. La Cucaracha right across my eyeballs. Naturally, I screamed like a little girl and jumped out of bed.

Melina had felt something moments before, but her dream-mind decided to chalk it up to my hair tickling her arm. She may have ignored the warning from her inner self, but she could not ignore me screaming bloody murder. Out of a deep slumber, she flung the covers to the floor and somersaulted off the end of the bed.

It would have been olympic if she had stuck the landing, but her dismount looked like what it was: someone hurtling off a king-sized balance beam in the dark. There was just enough moonlight for me to see her crash to the floor.

I stood there in horror at the thought of a neck injury or concussion. To make matters worse, Melina started convulsing. The numbers 911 flashed across my mind until I realized she was doing another instinctual thing: giggling uncontrollably, and silently, the way you do because you need to fill your lungs with enough air before you can properly explode. Which she did. From the gut. And we went on like this, howling until our sides hurt so bad that we couldn't tell if the tears were from agony or hilarity. #MarriedLife.

What a great movie. Totally worth the terrifying nightmares.

Warning: May trigger memories of that one thing you did in 2009 that still wakes you up at 2:17 a.m.

It’s my first time seeing Ani DiFranco, and I’m instantly hypnotized. She’s a ferocious little chipmunk. Guitar strings rattle and pop as she scampers across the stage — totally in love with life.

I’m so lost in her spell that I barely notice my wife slip away to get a drink. A few minutes later Melina returns, standing where she was, in front and a little to the left.

I start scratching her back along with some light massaging. This goes on for a couple minutes until the song ends – when a large Black lady turns around. She’s an orbulant beauty.

Orbulant /OR-byuh-lent/: adjective. 1. Round, radiant. 2. Not in the dictionary. 3. Looks nothing like Melina.

“HELLO?!” snaps the stranger in front of me.

I literally levitate off the ground, then cover my face. I try to explain what happened, but die laughing instead — my spirit astral-projecting in self-defense.

Apparently, her husband had gone off to get a drink too, so she thought I was him the whole time.

Then her husband walks up. He looks like Mr. Clean, but with prison-yard tattoos coiling over every bulging muscle. Suddenly the tats start to shape-shift and expand. Nobody spiked my drink. The guy was just flexing.

As he towers over me, I pray that he’s merely big-bear-hug scary and not “Hulk smash!” scary.

Hulk: “Dude, did you just touch my wife?!”

My spirit re-enters the building. Clearly it was needed back on earth. Fight or flight mode kicks in. However, instead of running, I decide to tell a joke instead — see where it goes.

Me: “Yeah, I was scratching her back because I thought she was my wife. Look, my wife is walking up now. She can scratch your back if you want and we can call it even.”

He laughs, which is my face’s cue to turn from pale-white ghost back to pink-white ginger.

What a testament to Ani DiFranco’s talent — that she could entrance two strangers into sharing such an intimate moment, completely unaware of each other’s name, face, or race. Music will always be colorblind like that. And I’ll always be an idiot.

I then do an about-face and power walk to the farthest corner of the club, where I can properly short-circuit in private. I’m still in shock, wiping tears between waves of laughter.

Melina walks up, wearing a familiar look of confusion, but I can only say two words before bursting out into a high-pitched giggle. I sound like a mad scientist but more ridiculous, like Beaker. “I scratched …” is all I can get out.

Later on, we pass the couple and I give Mel a little scratch on the back. They laugh … again. But it’s different this time. I know what mockery looks like. Their eyebrows squinch a bit.

I lower my head, but refuse to surrender.

“Hey, y'all know where to find me if you get an itch.”

It cracked like a gunshot — a sound that usually gets you cuffed. Instead, Southwest published this photo in their in-flight zine. No mug. No miles. I didn't even get a measly drink coupon.

Doesn’t matter. I got the story. This is how my toddler took over the Nashville Airport.

Dec. 23, 2011. Finn and Fiona were 2 years, 9 months old.

Snowstorms had delayed our Christmas flight to Raleigh, and we were failing as parents. After an hour reading the same books, Fiona's restlessness turned to tantrum. The stares of people nearby started to look like bad words.

I tried to fashion a paperclip into a frog, but one bounce and it was gone. Then, the metaphorical light bulbs flashed as I got an idea. The “bulbs” were right there, staring me in the face in the form of three shiny silver helium balloons floating above the Christmas display by the gift store.

For the sake of everyone's sanity, I ran over and commandeered them for Fiona. As if I had flipped a switch, her crying turned to hysterical laughter. But the new crazy looked almost identical to the previous one and continued to attract glares. Clearly, her energy couldn't be contained in the small deli we were in, so I unleashed her to run the halls.

She wove through holiday crowds at top speed, balloons bobbing behind and occasionally grazing the faces of speed walkers. Before long, people were pointing and smiling.

I was thrilled to be back in society’s good graces, but red alerts were still sounding in my head. Toddlers can't just run around willy nilly without something going horribly wrong.

Sure enough, we all cringed as Fiona tripped over someone’s luggage. Remarkably though, she had been hugging one of the balloons. Not only did it break her fall, but she slid a few feet across the tiled floor as she crash-landed.

I couldn't tell if the onlookers were getting up to see if she was okay or if they were giving her a standing ovation. In any case, Fio turned it into a game, running a bit faster this time and leaping into the air. A few of the power walkers leaped into the air themselves as she ran up behind them, sliding by like a belly-surfing penguin on ice.

It's too bad we didn’t get it on camera. I would have captured the magic myself, except my hands were tied up doing traffic control. Passersby started clearing the way. Now the whole corridor was her personal runway … until she leaped a little too high.

POW!

Fiona hit the ground, still spread out like Superman as she slid to a stop. At this point, nobody seemed to care that the exploding balloon sounded like gunfire.

TSA #1: “Yeaaaah, we're just going to let this one slide.”
TSA #2: “You're fired.”
TSA #1: “C’mon!”
TSA #2: “Ok, it was pretty good.”

When Fiona stood up, the two other balloons pulled up and away. “Noooooo!” she cried. I jumped, but couldn't get there in time. That was it. The show was over. Fiona was bawling as I picked her up. As we walked back to the deli, I faintly heard someone behind me in the whiskey bar say, “Hey.” I looked back and Dude was holding a chair. “I bet you can get her those balloons,” he suggested.

I don't turn down a good dare, and this was close enough. The man was betting on me. Sure, Fiona played a part in it, but honestly, I wanted the audience to myself. The twins are always stealing the show.

I handed Fiona off to her mother to be consoled, but it was just a ploy to keep Melina distracted. She’s a force to be reckoned with anytime, but especially when I show my ass.

So I grabbed the chair and quickly got to work, but my first attempt fell short. Dude looked disappointed, like my height was false advertisement. I was just another tall white guy with deceptively jumpy vibes.

I could see a few airport staff members pointing my way, trying to decide if I was going to be a problem. At least Melina wasn’t watching. That meant there was still time to hatch a new plan. I spied a trash can that looked promising, but the thing was massive, made of stone – way too heavy to slide. What if …?

It took some muscle, but I was able to tip it over just enough to keep its contents from spilling out, but far enough to slowly roll it along the bottom edge.

It was part balancing, part Frogger as I wove through the speed walkers and grinned at all the gawkers. As I climbed onto the trash can, onlookers from the deli down to the whiskey bar and just about all of terminal 2 were tuned in. That’s when I saw my extremely bewildered wife cutting through the crowd. It was now or never.

[Alright Spielberg. I'll make it easy for ya’.]

FADE IN:

INT. NASHVILLE AIRPORT – LARGE CORRIDOR – DAY

The shrewd face of MELINA looks confused. The warm face of BAR DUDE begins to smile, eyebrows rise in anticipation. A walkie-talkie is heard off-screen.

TSA #1 (V.O.)
We’ve got a jumper. Repeat.
We've got a jumper. Over.

IN SLOW MOTION – DARBY launches. Fingertips just barely snag the end of the ribbon.

CUT TO:

EXT. SPACE
GREEN SCREEN – DARBY’S hair is standing straight up. We see stars, planets and a big freaking supernova. We hear the string quartet crescendo.

CUT TO:

MEL’S POV
Darby tucks and rolls, still clutching the ribbon. Fiona jumps on him as the barflies explode.

FADE OUT

It would have been a Steven Spielberg ending had I not come down so hard. Mel was the only one who could tell I was hurt, but I had so much adrenaline pumping that my limp looked more like victory swagger.

As Fiona hugged my leg, I tied her fuzzy red glove to the ribbon and tossed the two remaining balloons back up toward the ceiling. Her jaw dropped in disbelief. Before she could get mad, the balloons started to slowly drift back down with the weight of the glove. Fiona began laughing, then clapping and stomping in anticipation.

When it was time for us to board, Fiona gave the balloons to a little boy sitting on the floor. I almost lost it, watching him blush at my little girl. I bet he kept that fuzzy glove.

As we floated into Raleigh, Mel reminded me that I wasn't Superman. Said I was pretty good at flying, but that I needed to work on my landing. Fiona will have to teach me someday.

TCA said to put everything in the box. I followed the rules, but X-ray dude looks grumpy for some reason.