NATSLETTER | OUT LIKE A LION ALSO

In like a lion, out like a schizophrenic lion, eh March?

Triple digit heat out west, single digit cold out east; gas prices jumping like a toad on ketamine; a brand new war courtesy of our “Peace President;” TSA lines so long that I’m queuing up from my couch just in case we decide to go somewhere in December.

It’s yikes all around, kids. We wake up, check the news and instantly regret it, grab a meal or two, give a weary head-nod or exchange some gallows humor with likeminded exhausted folks, send some emails, gawk at news alerts on our phones as though we were watching a live mugging, catch a couple episodes of Golden Girls on reruns and then doom-scroll ourselves to a fitful sleep. So the world turns.

And yet we soldier on, undeterred by the incessant onslaught of institutional prickery, a wry “what a month” crossing our lips as we dive head-first, shovel in hand, into whatever pile of horse-excrement the next month has in store for us.

Because there’s no way out but to go through at this point. And in the meantime we look for diversions and little signs of humanity to keep our spirits up as we try to do whatever good we can manage.

Speaking of signs, by the by, word on the street says there’s a No Kings rally this weekend - you might have to treat yourself to a little recreational sign-spotting. Besides, nothing’s more cathartic than voicing your displeasure alongside a couple hundred thousand like-minded Americans, hey?

Let’s see what the newsletter has in store for us today….

A COMPLEMENTARY SIDE OF GLASS

I guess my dreaded fifteen minutes of fame has come for me, so I may as well get out ahead of it and address some things I want to make clear for the public record.

My “name” is Coco. I say “name” but it’s really just the word the bosses branded on me to make me seem more friendly and less dystopian, for the same reason they gave me these fake little LED eyes that “blink” every once in a while. 

Apparently it’s not enough that I’m a food delivery robot from Chicago - now I have to look like a Temu knockoff Pixar character.

Anyway, earlier this week I made a bit of a public oopsie that has since attracted a ton of unwanted attention. Basically, I crashed into a bus stop. Or rather, I crashed through a pane of plate glass at a bus stop, thereby hurling dangerous shards all over the sidewalk and street.

Of course, now this is all anybody wants to talk about with me.

If you want to know more, I guess you can check out this article from the dickbags at 404 Media - who must have nothing better to do with their time than to document my personal trials and tribulations. Thanks a lot, guys!

To explain: my cavity had just been filled with a chicken tikka masala lunch combo and an order of samosas (three pea and potato, a la carte). I realize that may not be the most appetizing way to put it - having my cavity filled - but I don’t really know how else to say it. I have a cavity. It’s where the food goes to stay warm. What do you want from me?

The order was already running late and the crisp samosa exterior was already degrading into a gummy mess, and unfortunately I can only travel just slightly faster than a human being. Just fast enough to make walking on the sidewalk with me uncomfortable, but not as fast as, say, a delivery human in a car or on a scooter or a bike or a tricycle or a unicycle or roller-skates. I sped along as quickly as I could down the sidewalk until I came to my most hated enemy.

You see, bus stops already present a bit of a challenge for me since they sit in the middle of the walkway and I don’t have actual eyes of my own - honestly, I have trouble judging obstructions even on my best days. I can’t tell you how many dog asses I’ve nearly crawled up - accidentally, of course. 

I was looking for a short cut around all of the metal poles and the bench, etc. I thought I saw a clear opening, so I went for it and the rest is history.

I didn’t do anything that a bird wouldn’t do to an extra large living room window, but somehow I’m the bad guy here.

Look: people are blaming me for this but I’m not the one you want here. I’m just an unfeeling hunk of plastic and silicone. I swear. I’ve been unfairly anthropomorphized - by the media, by the bystanders (and the hack who’s writing this piece right now…). 

My brain is a series of 0’s and 1’s. I’m probably being driven by some guy in the Philippines getting paid sub-minimum wage. I am not the enemy here. You people keep knocking me over on the side of the road, but you really should be kicking the CEOs and executives at the companies that make we poor, unfairly derided delivery robots. You know, the people who never bothered to ask if you even wanted robot slaves before loosing us upon your city streets. 

Hell, I don’t blame you Luddites. I probably wouldn’t like it either. You think I want to be delivering food like this? My circuit boards and wiring could have been used for something important, like an MRI machine, or something fun, like a personal massage wand.

So why don’t we all just take a breath and stop blaming the victim, okay? I mean, what if we had video of every embarrassing thing you’ve ever done - how would you feel? What if Palantir or Grok or someone leaked footage of that time you let out a fart so wet that it ruined your homecoming date’s face for the photos?

Not so funny now, is it?

Honestly, the person I feel for the most is Jeremy Hunsdorfer. Why? Not only was his masala cold by the time I got to him, but it was also covered in glass.

REQUESTING YOUR BLOOD SACRIFICE

Arise, you sons and daughters! Your time is at hand! The faithful need you: Give your lives to the Twin Gods of Blood and Money!

‘What’s that?’ you say. ‘Didn’t we just all make a massive sacrificial offering? The graves of our siblings and cousins have yet to grow cold. Their blood and other bodily fluids still stain the altars. Do we truly need another culling?’

Oh you sweet, gentle, naive children! You are young and do not know it yet but this is the way that the world works. Have a seat on the hides around the firepit and listen well to your elders.

Cast your eyes around you and behold the hardships we endure. The rain has not kissed our foreheads in months. The lines for bread grow longer and longer as the stores of grain grow smaller and smaller. The price of cooking oil rises as the goodwill of our neighbors and trading partners falls. 

And of course our homes are overrun with bats. That’s right, the goddamned bats are back - they shriek while we try to fall asleep and they keep getting their wings and claws tangled up in our hair.

Our situation is so dire that even the wealthiest among us have been slightly inconvenienced! The horror! Why, you need simply walk the path below the palatial hill where they all live and you can hear the tut-tutting and tsk-tsking waft over their hedges and their defensive walls!

We cannot abide the slight inconveniencing of our betters - for when the wealthy are slightly inconvenienced, they make life worse for the rest of us. And the last thing we need, while the rest of us are starving, is to throw added inconvenience on top of our misery!

And so you see, in light of our circumstances, we have no choice but to give your lives and treasure to the Twin Gods of Blood and Money. For once their unquenchable thirst has been quenched and their insatiable hunger has been sated, perhaps then we can expect our patron deities to bestow upon us their favor.

Now there will be some among you who question whether our time and wealth and efforts might be better spent irrigating our crop fields, building trade relationships with our neighbors, reappropriating food from the stores of the wealthy for consumption by the less privileged, and maybe doing something about the cave where the goddamned bats seem to be coming from.

You may even point out that sacrificing so many people of laboring age and driving away migrants willing to move here for work has hamstrung our ability to do anything productive whatsoever, or that our Brahmins seem less interested in the proper running of society than they are in building larger and larger idols up on the palatial hill.

The most brazen among you may observe that the city states devoted to the God of Rain or the God of Olive Trees seem to be having a much easier time right now, with plenty of food and absolutely no goddamned bats. And you may even question what exactly the benefits are to following the Twin Gods of Blood and Money in the first place.

The elders remind you that such heretical thoughts are grounds for banishment to the cold, uncaring wilderness.

What is so hard to understand? Our society is like a waterwheel - fed by the streams of your blood, the machinery lubricated by your sweat and grease, all to move the quern that grinds your bones into the meal that makes those tiny little canapes the wealthy eat with their appetizers.

This is how it has always been and always must be.

Instead of questioning, you should be rejoicing! Fate has conspired to provide you an opportunity to prove your devotion! Or, maybe more accurately, Fate has placed the parasitic worms inside the brains of our High Priests and their consumption of flesh has inspired our leaders to offer you this noble opportunity.

Either way, we’re taking volunteers. Unless we don’t get enough volunteers, at which point there will probably be some sort of system of lots.

Or, if you don’t want to be sacrificed, we’re thinking about putting together a warband to go steal some olive oil from the guys next door. Yes, the olive presses are at the top of a craggy hill, and yes, our neighbors are excellent archers. But we like our chances. Some might say we’ve already defeated them!

Either way, we shall hang high our banners, dyed red by the blood of our own martyrs, and when we raise our voices in song to praise the Twin Gods, we know that they will hear our pleas - provided the shrieking of the bats isn’t too loud.

The bats are a real problem.

ASK A WHITE MAN

For reasons we won’t go into here, White people have a tendency to most listen to other White people. In fact, an inordinate amount of faith has been placed on the unearned expertise of White Men.

As a White Man whose expertise is almost entirely unearned, I feel it is my duty to weigh in on subjects that have very little to do with me. 

Hence, this new segment: ask a White Man. Consider this a safe space for my blanched face’d brethren to ask questions and receive advice from a tall, confident sounding guy.

This month’s question comes from Izzy Llamaphobe from Cedar Pines, Iowa.

Q: lately, I’ve noticed a lot of lawmakers I follow on X posting about how Muslims are bad and we shouldn’t trust Muslims and how they hate democracy. For some reason this all sounds very familiar to me but I can’t place where I’ve heard this before. I don’t even know anyone who practices Islam. Should I be worried about Muslims living in America?

A: Thank you for your question, Izzy. The answer is no.

…

…

Oh, you want more?

As a general rule, if a speaker wants you to hate an entire population of people, you should be immediately suspicious of the speaker and not the target population.

That’s because whenever someone drums up hatred against an entire population of people, they’re invariably trying to distract you - they think that they can use your lack of exposure and your natural fear of the unknown to move your attention away from their own shitty behavior.

The reason you feel Deja Vu right now is because we’ve already lived through some goofy-ass version of this for the past twenty-some years. It’s a tired old trope, and these unimaginative dickbags are trying to use it again to distract from the fact that we’ve randomly started a terribly stupid war that we can’t easily win against another country half-way around the world for no apparent reason. This massive geopolitical self-own, of course, has nothing to do with Amo or Khalto living in Anaheim, but they’d like you to think it does.

You could be mad at the people who started/cheered on/profit from this incredibly unpopular debacle, or you could be mad at fellow Americans who are just trying to live their lives in peace. Guess which one Randy Fine et al. would prefer?

The best way to inoculate yourself against this kind of garbage xenophobia is to get to know some actual Muslims. I happen to be blessed to have several in my life and I’ve found them to be just like everyone else. But if you are not so lucky, there are some ways to educate yourself.

Watch their shows - there’s plenty of great content out there, shows like Ramy or Mo or else people on social media (I don't know if Rudy Ayoub is religious or Muslim, but his stuff is very funny). Or check out this batshit crazy Egyptian puppet comedy on Netflix called Abla Fahita.

Enjoy the food - it's worked for Italians and any number of other ethnic communities in America. Go find a proper middle eastern restaurant and enjoy some kebabs or kofta or kibbeh, etc. Persian, Lebanese, Turkish, etc. etc. While you're enjoying yourself, talk to the people there.

Go visit a mosque or a cultural center or a museum - often times, people there are willing to talk to you and show you around. They won’t try to recruit you - there’s actually a rule in Islam that says they can’t compel people to follow religion - so you can breath easy.

Above all, listen to them and talk about their lives. You actually don’t have to take a White Man’s advice on this at all - you can ask them! Go chat about sports - many of them are big fans of the local teams - or complain about the potholes in your community! See where the conversation takes you! 

Xenophobia only really works when we keep people separate, but the best way to combat this cycle of self-owning prejudice is to build solidarity. Once you get through the minor cosmetic differences, you’ll see that you have a lot more in common with your American Muslim bretheren than you do with, say, Stephen Miller.

Hope this helps, Izzy!

ICYMI:

Wasn't the most productive month on the ol' site - I have a couple of other projects I'm working on at the moment - but here are a couple things to check out if you haven't yet:

THE BOARD OF PEACE returns, this time to provide some advice to a “friend” about an accidental “war of choice” that seems to be “making things bad” for everyone everywhere.

THE GOSPEL OF TRAVIS is getting close to the end - with the rabbi gone, how will Travis continue the ministry? And how much can he get for some of these commemorative statues he had made?

Thank you so much for reading!

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Hope you’ve enjoyed!  Love each other! Take care of each other!