The United States of Robert


Yup. End of Western Civilization. How it looks.

I held a vote. I won 1-0. I am now my own country, seceded from everything.

Why? Because you’re all disgusting. Every institution I have ever revered or respected is corrupt. No place left even on the Internet I can go to for plain speaking. Now, even Drudge and Breitbart are on some sort of anti-American warpath. I agree with Joe Jersey. Trump should should just say fuck you and resign. He doesn’t need this. Neither do I.

Fake news comes from both left and right. No way to differentiate any more. The map above is inaccurate. The United States of Robert is just a pinpoint of New Jersey, located in the lower left hand corner. Or it spans an entire nation fed up with lies, idiocy, and nonsense.

It’s not true that I don’t care. It’s that nobody else really does. The Facebook experience. People just trade links, like some digital game of Old Maid, “Well, here’s something I agree with and have nothing of my own to say about: Share, Like, Emoji. Hmmm, do you have a Queen? Aha.”

After a lifetime of fighting what is finally winning, functional sociopaths raised by incompetent narcissist parents, I accept defeat. There is no winning this war for civilization. It’s gone.

Why I have declared the United States of Robert. The only path left is solipsism. The hero of the United States of Robert is Glenn Gould.

Some of us can still live until the barbarians come to kill us.

Today I’m 64.

As lame a song as it ever was.

Will you still need me? No. Oldheads doddering into uselessness.

But I’m in my chair, seemingly somnolent, and my supposedly senile mind is still on fire. You just can’t see it. Unless you take care to loook. I am 64 but I’m not interested in being Sir Paul McCartney. You? I’m more like the dirty guy still in the trenches.

The grand farewell is not far away. But it has its attractions.

And then there’s legacy. Just a writer. I’m content with that.

Happy Birthday to me.

The Return of Johnny’s Last Chance Garage

My place is the last stop for gas, parts, food, directions, and other necessities before you plunge into the wilderness of the barrens. Not much doing at the moment. Might as well fire up this rig I’ve cobbled together. You can do almost anything with wire and alligator clips. I’ve got a 13-inch TV (color), a rebuilt IBM Selectric, a modified Commodore 64 with an aftermarket supercharger and algae-based memory, and miscellaneous other machines, all attached to an old satellite dish somebody traded for a set of used tires. The whole thing is powered by a 1953 Hemi donkey engine I also use to power my pneumatic garage tools. I’m connected to everything that’s happening in the world. And thanks to an old transmission tower that used to belong to the Jersey Devil Church of Christ before they disappeared without a trace, I can talk to the world too. I’m thinking of it as the Command Center. So when I have nothing better to do I might as well sound off about anything that occurs to me. If you have nothing better to do, you might as well stop by and see what I’m sounding off about. But that would be up to you.

Victorian Ruin Gardens

There was an era called Victorian. In England. Which is a country your parents may have heard of. Ask them. They had a Queen named Victoria who ruled for 150 years or so. Toward the end, around 1900, things started to fall apart. When ruin became a whole new esthetic. Hence Victorian Ruin Gardens.

So now we are recapitulating Victorian Ruin Gardens in Elsinboro, NJ.

We used to have a gazebo. I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for this marvelous moment to occur.

The gazebo is gone.

And the willow is back.

The Brain of Donald Trump. Too Ancient for Postmoderns to get.

The modern archaeologists thought it was junk and shelved it.

Then somebody realized it was an ancient computer and set about trying to decide how it worked.

It was pretty fancy, all in all.

Layers of gears and spindles and bright orange stuff.

Stupid stuff said the MIT and NR guys.

Until it actually worked. Power for nothing and your tweets for free.