Andersen's general theory of free ridership

The bills for all this shit (read: the service industries, the private sector, the West) are not paid by the people who play by the rules. They're paid by the fuckups.

Therefore almost everything you buy consists of a bet by the person you're paying that, at some point, you're going to become one of the fuckups.

Trajectory

My brain has declined with me; my thoughts are wetter, warmer, softer, weaker. But I can still remember that brief arc above the clouds when I was 20, breaking into clean crisp air and seeing every system laid out by the light of the stars.

Keep your lamps

I still keep time by my 2005 earthquake, like the seventh city of Troy. But the candles I lit then to stay alive, which I've kept, are burning out one by one.

Professional calculus

If I don't update this blog very often, it might be because my topical blog is, like, its day job.

This summer, my topical blog also has a day job. Even my topical blog's day job has a day job. But I like to think this one, down at the bottom, is the most integral of them all.

The point is, this blog has a new name for its day job. If you're curious about what I'm doing, stop on over.

Memo

Well, pantry moths, it's been a long winter and spring for us.

Since Christmas, you've been appearing in my kitchen almost every afternoon, rubbing your tiny feet together, distressing friends and lady friends alike, pasting your hideous young along the edges of my ceiling, scumming the walls with your smeared guts.

I've come to understand that this is how things have always been for you.

We like the same foods, you and I. We both enjoy croutons, walnuts, unbleached flour, powdered sugar and the spices of India. And though I have, during our acquaintance, regularly supplied our household with all these things -- at the value, in my world, of many hours of labor -- I observe that you have not.

This is why I'm writing, pantry moths.

Effective immediately, I'm changing the terms of our partnership. You haven't yet interfered with my enjoyment of the cupboard we share, and I see no reason why you will in the time that we have remaining. But I will no longer restock our mutual supply of dry goods. And though your nutritional requirements are minimal, they are real. Starting today, every meal either one of us consumes brings us closer to a final reckoning.

And I will survive, pantry moths. For I am larger than you, and far crueler.

I don't relish the weeks and months to come. But nor, in truth, have I enjoyed our time together. And so I will not mourn the departure, one by one, of each of your skinny, black little asses.

How to make money in America

Step 1: Coil the odds as short as you can.
Step 2: Roll the dice.

The masses

It's natural to assume that a crowd of people will behave like water or an amoeba or a nest of ants, creeping and probing until it discovers a path. But a human crowd isn't focused on discovery; it's focused on desire. It's goal-oriented, like a lightning bolt or a cobra. When an event occurs -- a spreading rumor, an opened gate, a shouted order -- each individual calculates what effect it will have on his or her immediate personal objectives and the crowd reacts suddenly and unpredictably.

The best way to control a crowd of humans is therefore to never present it with new information.