Hello?  Is this thing on?

    Been a while. 15ish years since I've trodden in this dark underground burrow with my butt blocking the entrance (wombat thing, look it up).  Had to bust the lock off, since I wasn't sure I had the key anymore.  Crap, I forgot to feed the gerbil before I left; that's going to stink.

    I'm contemplating coming back here and stepping away from FascistBook again, now that they've decided that anything goes - can't offend the new dictator, after all.  The inspiration came from Wil "Shut Up Wesley!" Wheaton, a most excellent individual, once cursed by bad script writers.

    The world is getting demonstrably worse is so many ways.  The environment is halfway in the shitter and the flush is accelerating, the nazis are coming back out of the swamps (since the people who fought them last time are almost all gone and we've forgotten why it had to be done), and it looks like we're headed for a neo-feudal version of a cyberpunk dystopia but without the cool stuff.  I wanted Star Trek, not Snow Crash, dammit!

    I'm older now, seeing the light of retirement coming down the tunnel at me.  At least I hope that's what that bright light and roaring noise is.  Arguably, I may now have the wisdom to see how royally fucked we are as a species.  They call it "post truth".  Think about that for a minute, really let it sink in, and realize how terrifying that actually is.  Nothing is real, or nothing that matters, anyway.  Whoever shouts the loudest and fastest and drowns out everything else wins.  Keep farming those rage clicks to make the masses flock to you for their dopamine hit.  Make sure to find out what to hate today.  You won't be able to make any choices that matter, because you won't know what's real.  In time, there won't be anyone left who even remembers an anachronism like "objective reality".

    A certain politician announced his run to replace the PM today, and within minutes YT was offering a nasty little wingnut diatribe on how this person's attitude on a certain tax is the same as the PM's, and how evil this was, and how it showed he was some sort of commie-pedo-necrophiliac-terrorist-jaywalker.  No attempt to look at the issue and rationally explain why it might or might not be bad, just straight to the ad hominem attacks and stoking up anger amongst the Morlocks.  Here's a fun little exercise: look up "stochastic terrorism".  So I gave it a thumbs-down and told it not to recommend the channel anymore, hoping the somehow the Great Algorithm might spare this crap from one or two other victims.

    Terry Pratchett once wrote: "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on."  These days the truth doesn't even get time to put a foot in before the next dozen lies are zooming past. Everything is bullshit.  I thank my Gen-X upbringing for early training on detecting bovine effluvia, because now my automatic response to just about every news story and statement from authority is a eyebrow-raising "reeaaallly....?"  

    So my tolerance for "organically sourced" fertilizer is rapidly diminishing.  Is this how crusty old men have always been created?   I mean, it's been a longtime goal of mine to be an official curmudgeon; is this how to do it?  But now those clouds deserve a shouting-at, and those kids on my lawn look might suspicious.

    This is my reason for considering (just considering at this time, mind you) bailing out of Zuckland completely.  No hurry.  Rome wasn't built in a day and the world won't be completely ruined in one.  Looks like it only takes about 3 generations to completely fuck it up.

    So maybe I'll clean up this old hovel a bit and hide out here for a while, and spew out the occasional rant or random thought.  I promise not to always be this gloomy.

    Only a wombat would think mooning your enemies is the best defence.

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2020/11/wombat-bums-theres-more-than-meets-the-eye/