I surprise myself sometimes by behaving in a ruinous and unsupportive way
They should’ve called it The Leftovers if that title wasn’t already taken
You may have started hearing some of the dumbest mother fuckers alive whining about "15 minute cities" again lately and thought what the hell are these people even talking about? Here's a piece from a couple months ago (that I've taken out from behind the paywall this week) that explains where it all started.
You'll have to be a paid subscriber to read today's Hell World in its entirety. It largely concerns the 2019 Spanish sci-fi/horror film The Platform. Then after that some bad news about the situation with Cop City in Atlanta (which we covered again last week) and a lengthy discussion between me and a Danish reporter about how fucked up the American healthcare system is. It goes a lot like this:
Me: I am telling you we live in Hell here.
Danish reporter: It may sound like he is making a joke but no these people are truly not doing well.
The next five people who subscribe for a year at the full price I'll send an autographed copy of the new book and some Hell World merch. Thanks to everyone who has bought it so far please feel free to keep tagging me with your copy.
People always seem to really like this piece when I re-share it on Twitter so here it is again if you somehow missed it. I probably should've included it in the book. Fucked that up.
There’s a bunny I see out in my backyard all the time and since I was thinking about whale lifespans I just looked up how long they live in the wild and the computer said one or two years which isn’t very long at all. Domesticated ones can live around nine years but it’s admittedly a bit of a tradeoff for them freedom-wise.
I saw some fresh tracks in the snow this morning and I was thinking about how cool it would be to be able to jump as far as they do. Not cool enough to be worth dying after like fifteen months but still pretty cool you have to admit.
I’d jump so much if I could.
I never jump anymore. I was standing under a basketball net inside of a gymnasium recently when I went to vote and change the world via my single responsibility under democracy and thinking about how pathetic it would look if I tried to jump up and grab the rim which is something I unimaginably could actually do at one point in my life.
Never dunk though. I could have easily lied about having been able to do that here but a man’s integrity is all he has in the end.
When was the last time you jumped?
Some day will be the last day you ever jump and you won’t know it and then you’ll never jump again. Really jump I mean. You’ll live the rest of your life planted firmly on the ground and getting closer and closer to being inside of it with every passing minute until one day you’ll be floating for eternity among whatever it is that’s swimming down there in the soil all devouring each other.
Alright here's today's main thing. Subscribe to read it all. Good day.
Something queer is happening in that my brain is sanding off the bulk of my early memories day by day. Concurrently I’m not replacing those memories with anything of substance. New experiences with any kind of tangible weight to them.
The assistant manager is nodding out in the office and not keeping up with inventory.
How you can sense a corner store is not long for this world many months before the fact of it is made plain. Admitted to.
Of late they are no longer restocking what would intuitively to all seem like a staple of such an establishment. One liter bottles of Polar soda water as a very specific and local example. Ah the trucks the guy says as an excuse when you ask. To buy time. To forestall the inevitable. The warehouses perhaps. Supply chains.
More likely the invoices are simply past due. Each escalating notice impaled on a desk spike in anger. The kind you could put your hand through if you weren’t careful.
I’ve watched friends’ businesses go through this in my day. Beloved restaurants. Lauded even. Smoking under their kitchen vent after hours and waiting for the bathroom queue to turn over before excusing myself. Be right back you say then coming back on the volley much faster.
What about this thing I just thought?
Imagine cropping a photo of yourself on your phone. Pressing on the rectangle icon and then pinching it smaller and smaller each day.
I don’t even remember if I’ve used that analogy before.
I watched this Spanish movie called The Platform last night. It’s one of these heavy handed class disparity films they make now set in a massive tower or tunnel structure in which two prisoners are bunked to a floor for a certain period of time. Our knowledge of how deep or tall the structure is and therefore how many are being tortured thusly is parceled out slowly. Once a day a large table set with a lavishly prepared feast descends from the kitchen above and pauses at each floor long enough for the prisoners to hurriedly gorge themselves before continuing its descent.