January 2022— CHEERS!
Happy New Year! Another year over, another fifty-two weeks of our once-civilized society hurtling headlong toward full batcrap craziness at an ever-increasing rate. Mankind has always been prone to stupidity and irrationality, mind you, but good God almighty— the slippery slope we’re on is getting steeper and slicker every day!
Perhaps this is the inevitable course of every society... the Second Law of Thermodynamics manifest in humanity itself. Indeed, everything in this world of ours eventually stops working or rots or dies, so why not civilization itself? Maybe it is simply the natural course of all Earthly things, like water flowing downhill—
“Successful is the politician who convincingly pretends to lead water downhill, where it is inexorably headed anyway. Along water’s lengthy sojourn from mountain to sea it spins textiles, generates electricity, irrigates crops, transports goods, slakes our collective thirst, and animates our plumbing... and for all of this our “leaders” shamelessly claim full credit. But now, with the mountains nearly parched, they are furiously filling their own secret cisterns before the rivers run completely dry. Go ahead and substitute our national wealth and character for the aforementioned water, and that is exactly what is happening to us.” (Me.)
Everything we eat, drink, drive, or otherwise use is becoming commodified, artificially “scarce-ified,” cheapened, or just plain ruined. How can we survive this? Well, we can’t; we’re all going to die anyway. But we might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here, and so I’ll be sharing my weekly or at least fortnightly insights into making the most of our time, efforts, and money... short-circuiting and hacking the markets for food, wine, clothing, tools, and more... and almost always flying in the face of conventional mass-marketing and group-think.
I welcome everyone’s participation. Every essay will have a comment section, and we also have a forum section for more interactive discussions. The rules are few and simple— Be polite and respectful; no politics or profanity. And if you wish to contribute an original essay, please contact me directly.
I look forward to sharing some good times and great conversations around the Table with all of you.
Best, DannyM