It didn’t happen that year. In fact, it’s been nearly three years
since I updated this Gopher hole. Which means it’s been nearly
three years since I finally managed to publicly perform the first
third of my twenty minute Columbine piece.
For two of those years, I was helping care for my dad. But when
he died earlier this year ‐‐ not from coronavirus ‐‐ it was only
the beginning. Because it was only a few weeks later that an al‐
ready crazy world went completely over the edge and headlong into
the abyss.
I don’t even know who I’m talking to. Once‐dear friends have been
ghosting me with increasing numbers for over ten years now, and
there is absolutely no sign of improvement on the horizon. Now,
talking about something as innocuous as the weather is fraught
with peril. One word astray, online or off, and you won’t even
have time to say goodbye to life as you knew it.
As far as family: I have no siblings. I have no kids, and so far
all my cousins are following in my footsteps, probably for the
same fucked‐up reasons. My mother hasn’t disowned me, but our
conversations are full of long and clearly disapproving silences
on her part, no doubt full of troubled thoughts on where and how
she went so horribly wrong. And on top of this already enormous
mountain of isolation comes the worldwide bullshit response to a
"pandemic", where the cure has clearly been worse than the dis‐
ease. And the hypocrisy, double standards and false equivalence
just keep piling higher and higher, and nobody gives a fuck ex‐
cept Nazis, which now means everyone to the right of Mao. Or any‐
one who dissents from the Holy Narrative. Which by saying, I have
now clearly outed myself as a Nazi and earned a permanent spot on
the Bad List.
I do my best to refuse to give in to rage and despair. I try to
count my blessings every day, and enjoy the small bits of happi‐
ness. But if I didn’t have my wife, who is very much God’s gift
to me, the odds are quite high that by now I would have killed
myself. In fact, last week I came closer to it than ever in my
entire life. Not actually doing it ‐‐ just thinking about it, and
seriously wanting to. Because I may never get another hug from my
mother ‐‐ even if she still loves me, she’s been infected by
those who deliberately spread the plagues of fear, hate and mis‐
trust. I may never perform my Columbine piece in full ‐‐ even if
public gatherings ever again take place, everyone has been in‐
fected with said plagues by people who are deliberately, openly
doing their damndest to start World War III. Race war? Class war?
You name it, they’re for it. Billionaires who could bail out the
entire middle class with the pocket change in their couch cush‐
ions lecturing the rest of us how we’re all in this together, so
just stay inside for the rest of your life, you filthy pleb. Hide
your face and know your place.
Nobody wants to feel alone. But for people like my mother, it
seems like nearly the entire world is their support network. I
have my wife, and two other people I can open up to without
reservation. That’s it. (Oh my God, do I wish my very good, very
gay friends were still with us today instead of having died, es‐
sentially, because they were overly promiscuous and irresponsi‐
ble. We would be having so many good talks. I’m sure of it. I
like to hope that we would.)
For the good of Western civilization, and indeed, for all humani‐
ty: Silicon Valley as we know it must be destroyed.
