The Absurd Resistance: A Manifesto for the Broken, the Burning, and the Brave

We begin with a scream, not a sermon.

This world is absurd. A meat grinder dressed up in hashtags and mortgages. The powerful drink from golden chalices forged from your stolen hours. And yet, they smile. They tell you to smile.

We won’t.

We are the inheritors of Camus’ defiance, Cioran’s despair, and Schopenhauer’s doom. We have read the contract called “life” and chosen to laugh, weep, or set it on fire depending on the day.

We believe:

In truth so ugly it loops back into beauty.

In jokes that kill fascism and punch gods in the mouth.

In community, not coercion.

In mutual aid over mass delusion.

In death being certain, but dignity optional.

We reject:

The capitalist cult of progress.

The myth of meritocracy.

The domestication of rebellion.

The narcotic of false hope.

The lie that life is a gift when it’s often just a receipt.

Like Bill Hicks, we know it’s just a ride, but we’re the type to grab the wheel and steer it into a bank.

Like Doug Stanhope, we toast to the end while telling the truth nobody paid to hear.

Like Che Guevara, we are willing to fight. Not because we believe victory is guaranteed, but because surrender is spiritual suicide.

Like Malcolm X, we reject peace without justice, and kindness without teeth.

Like Kropotkin, we believe in solidarity. Not because it’s idealistic, but because it’s the only antidote to the poison of power.

Like Chomsky, we speak plainly and punch upward.

Like Ligotti, we write horror because we live in it. And like Stephen King, we turn the grotesque into gospel.

There is no exit. There is only refusal. Refusal to comply. Refusal to pretend. Refusal to become the product.

We are absurd. We are aware. We are armed with wit, rage, and community.

We will not “build a better world.” We will undermine the one they’ve built. In the ruins, maybe something human can finally grow. So laugh. Fight. Write. Feed people. Burn things. And when they ask what the hell you think you’re doing, tell them:

“I’m just imagining Sisyphus happy … and loading the next rock into a trebuchet.”

The Last One to Leave, Please Turn Off the Stars

The end began on a Tuesday, not with a bang, but a corporate memo. Subject line:

“Due to budgetary constraints, existence will be discontinued effective immediately.”

At first, no one noticed. Birds kept chirping. Influencers kept influencing. A man in Tallahassee still refused to return his library books.

Then came the second memo.

“This is not a drill. Earth is being decommissioned. Please gather all meaningful memories into a single shoebox. Label it clearly. Return to HR.”

No one knew where HR was, but rumors spread it was located inside a vending machine behind the moon. The vending machine offered two items:

1. A bag of Dust of What Could Have Been

2. The Answer (temporarily out of stock)

A philosopher named Dr. Linda Spoon attempted to rally humanity. She declared: “Omnicide is just suicide with a better view.” She received a standing ovation, then spontaneously combusted from the irony.

The whales voted to stay neutral.

The bees unionized and demanded severance pollen.

The cockroaches opened a jazz club called “The Fallout Lounge.”

Meanwhile, governments responded the only way they knew how: with committees. The United Nations formed the Final Task Force on All That Is (and Isn’t). Their final report read:

“We deeply regret to inform you that everything was a clerical error.”

Earth filed an appeal. It was denied on the grounds of insufficient vibes.

In a bunker beneath Antarctica, a man named Derek attempted to reboot existence using an old Nintendo console and a paperclip. He succeeded, but only in resurrecting Disco.

The skies filled with mirrored balls and Donna Summer.

The oceans turned into soda.

The dolphins began speaking in limericks.

In space, the Galactic Oversight Council convened.

“Who authorized this?”

“I thought you did.”

“No, I outsourced it to a freelance algorithm.”

“Oh god.”

“No, just Algorithm-7. God was laid off last quarter.”

They voted to cancel the universe’s trial period. Turns out, no one had upgraded to Premium.

As atoms began untangling like poorly made spaghetti, one child—unbothered—drew a smiley face in the dirt. The dirt began humming. The humming confused the laws of physics.

The universe paused.

Time asked Space, “Are we… still doing this?”

Space shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I was just here for the free gravity.”

And just before the final pixel flickered out, someone whispered:

“Maybe this was a screensaver.”

Then everything crashed to desktop.

The Existentially Moist Wish of Darlene Crumb

A friend of mine asked me to write a sequel to my last short story involving the genie. This is what I could come up with. I hope she enjoys it…

—

Darlene Crumb was a woman haunted by one, unrelenting truth: she was always a little bit damp. Not soaking wet. Not sweaty. Just perpetually… moist. Elbows. Neck. Behind the knees. The mystery persisted across climates, shampoos, and three failed marriages.

One Tuesday—because all the strangest things happen on Tuesdays—she wandered into the back of a defunct Payless Shoes, looking for nothing and finding everything.

There, underneath a pile of expired insoles and dusty Crocs, sat an antique humidifier. She plugged it in. It sparked. The fire alarm laughed. And then, in a cloud of grapefruit LaCroix mist, emerged the same genie. Hawaiian shirt. Aviators. Pursed lips of someone who had once dated an energy healer named “Blade.”

“You’ve summoned me,” he said. “One wish. No bartering. No do-overs. No wishing for more wishes unless you’re into recursive paradoxes.”

Darlene blinked, the condensation on her eyelashes catching the light like tragic disco balls.

“I want,” she said slowly, “to finally understand the universe. I want the truth. All of it.”

The genie’s brow did a little dance. “That’s the big one. Cosmic enlightenment. You sure?”

“Positive. I’ve been wet for 39 years and I think it’s related to everything.”

With a shrug and a snip-snap, the genie granted the wish.

Instantly, Darlene’s brain exploded—not physically, but conceptually. Her eyes dilated into portals of pure comprehension. She saw time as a Möbius strip braided into a cat’s cradle. She understood dark matter, gravity, and why bread always lands butter-side down.

She gasped.

“It’s all soup.”

Everything. Matter. Meaning. Morality. Relationships. Socks. Soup.

Existence was just soup, swirling in infinite flavors, none of them consistent, all of them burning the roof of your mouth if you tried too hard to enjoy them.

She wept.

Then laughed.

Then threw up alphabet pasta that spelled out THE VOID WAVES BACK.

For the next three weeks, Darlene became a guru. She wore bathrobes in public and answered all questions with the phrase, “Only the broth knows.” She gained a cult following among TikTok astrologers and people who read horoscopes ironically.

But her enlightenment began to curdle.

She couldn’t enjoy anything anymore. Romance? Soup. Art? Soup. Her favorite podcast? Two Blokes Talk Soup, suddenly too literal. She once screamed for 14 minutes in a Whole Foods because someone asked if she wanted bone broth.

Her moistness increased. Because, of course, what is soup, if not the ultimate damp?

Desperate, she found the genie again, this time running a hemp-scented vape bar called “Vaporwave Vespers.”

“You gave me enlightenment!” she hissed, dripping all over the floor. “Take it back!”

The genie looked up from his crossword. “‘Cosmic reversal’ isn’t in the contract. One wish per customer. Union rules.”

“But I’m unraveling!”

“You asked for the truth,” he said, handing her a complimentary kale-flavored vape pen. “Turns out the truth is kind of a wet noodle.”

Darlene now wanders the world wrapped in towels, whispering cryptic soup-based riddles to strangers in parking lots. Her cult disbanded after she declared celery “the key to death.” She exists beyond joy, beyond suffering, beyond dryness.

She knows the secrets of the universe.

And she deeply, deeply regrets it.

Moral? Never ask for everything. Especially from a genie who smells faintly of citrus and has strong opinions about ska music.

The Transactional Tragedy of Terrance Blip

Terrance Blip was a man of modest ambitions: toast with the perfect butter-to-crisp ratio, socks without holes, and a bank account that didn’t judge him every time he opened his finance app. He lived alone in a studio apartment sandwiched between a psychic who only predicted Tuesdays and a taxidermist who specialized in emotionally distressed rodents.

One evening, while trying to return a cursed air fryer he had impulse-bought during a depressive episode, Terrance tripped over a knockoff lava lamp at a garage sale. It shattered with a melodramatic poof and out came a genie wearing aviators, a Hawaiian shirt, and the resigned aura of someone who’d been summoned during Love Island reruns.

“Congratulations,” said the genie, sipping a LaCroix. “You get one wish. Not three. That’s a myth. Union rules.”

Terrance blinked. “One? That’s not very—”

“Choose wisely or stupidly,” the genie interrupted. “I grant both with equal enthusiasm.”

Terrance, who had been recently charged $4.99 to cancel a free trial, didn’t hesitate.

“I wish that every cent I’ve ever spent in my entire life suddenly reappears in my bank account.”

The genie raised a suspicious eyebrow, which somehow hovered three inches off his face. “You sure? No ‘make me happy’ or ‘stop climate change’ or ‘bring back dinosaurs but they’re chill this time’?”

“Nope. I want my money back. Every dollar. From diapers to drinks. Give it all to Future Me.”

The genie snapped his fingers with a bored sigh. “Done. Good luck, champ.”

At first, it was glorious. Terrance’s phone dinged. His bank app went from $3.87 to $1,042,335.72.

He screamed. He danced. He Venmoed a random stranger $12 just because he could. He ordered eight pizzas, six of which he threw out because they “looked judgmental.”

But by day three, things took a turn. Terrance received a letter from the IRS, handwritten in crayon and lightly singed. It simply read: “WHERE DID THIS MONEY COME FROM, TERRY?”

He shrugged it off—what could they do? He had a genie-backed balance.

But then his body started reacting strangely. He gained weight from meals he hadn’t eaten in years. He suffered recurring stomachaches from a Taco Bell binge in 2012. He began waking up with hangovers from drinks he hadn’t consumed since college, including the infamous Flaming Banshee Night.

By week two, he was pelted by karmic echoes of every regrettable purchase he’d ever made. An army of chia pets stormed his living room. The haunted Beanie Baby he bought in ’98 hissed “capitalist pig” in Latin. A 6-foot stack of receipts materialized and cornered him in the shower, demanding he relive each transaction line by line.

Even worse, people from his past began showing up. A barista from 2007 wanted her tip back. A woman he’d ghosted after paying for dinner appeared, holding a menu and muttering, “You owe me appetizers and closure.”

His bank account remained fat, but Terrance was broke in every other sense—emotionally, spiritually, gastrointestinally.

Desperate, he sought out the genie again, only to find him running a kombucha stand in a strip mall.

“You didn’t read the fine print,” the genie said, sipping his own brand called “Soul Rot.” “You got all the money back. But you also got the consequences. Consumption is a ritual. You broke the cycle.”

“Fix it,” Terrance begged. “I’ll wish for anything. Just make it stop.”

“Nope,” said the genie, smiling serenely. “Only one wish per customer. Union rules.”

And with that, the genie vanished in a puff of oat milk vapor.

Terrance now lives under a mountain of refunded guilt, knee-deep in cursed yoga mats and artisanal regret. His bank account remains full, but he spends nothing—terrified that each swipe might unleash another receipt demon or childhood Happy Meal toy with unresolved trauma.

He’s learned a powerful lesson: Sometimes, the cost of getting your money back… is everything you paid to forget.

Barking Mad: The Philosophy of Wilfred

The FX show “Wilfred” is one of my all-time favorite shows. I never saw the original Australian version, but the American one struck a chord with me. I’ve watched and re-watched it several times. It’s philosophical. It’s stoner comedy. It’s dark. It’s all the things I love.

On the surface “Wilfred” is a stoner comedy where Ryan (played by Elijah Wood), is a clinically depressed ex-lawyer who tried to kill himself, but instead found himself talking to his neighbor’s dog, who appears to him as a full-grown man in a dog costume. Hijinks ensue. But beneath the bong smoke and profanity lies something far more profound: a surreal meditation of identity, sanity, and the human condition.

At its core, “Wilfred” is about the search for meaning in a meaningless world. Ryan’s life is sterile, scripted, and empty. He’s alienated from his family, his former profession, and himself. Enter Wilfred: a creature who embodies chaos, instinct, and the id run wild. He shits in Ryan’s neighbor’s boots, humps teddy bears, and goads Ryan into ever-more reckless behavior. But Wilfred is also, somehow, Ryan’s guide — his Virgil through a very shaggy Inferno.

The question that hovers over every episode: Is Wilfred real? Is Ryan insane? Does it matter?

This is classic absurdism. Think Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus: the recognition that life has no inherent meaning doesn’t lead to despair — it leads to freedom. Wilfred doesn’t hand Ryan answers. He hands him paradoxes, jokes, and humiliations. But in doing so, he forces Ryan to confront the absurdity of his own life and to choose whether or not to keep pushing the boulder.

Philosophically, Wilfred could be read as Ryan’s shadow self — Carl Jung’s idea of the hidden, repressed parts of the psyche. Wilfred says the things Ryan won’t say. He acts on the desires Ryan suppresses. He’s at once friend, enemy, conscience, and saboteur. It’s like Fight Club if Tyler Durden wore a dog suit and loved Scooby Snacks.

Freud would have a field day here. Wilfred is all id — sex, aggression, pleasure, impulse. Ryan, meanwhile, is ego — repressed, neurotic, obsessed with doing “the right thing.” Their interactions often mirror Freud’s model of the mind in conflict. And the battleground? Reality itself.

But what makes the show so intriguing is that Wilfred isn’t just destructive. He’s also deeply wise in a perverse way. He teaches Ryan how to feel, how to trust, and ultimately how to live, not by giving him control — but by forcing him to let go of it. Just as Tyler Durden said to the Narrator in Fight Club: “Just let go!”

In a society that values productivity over introspection, “Wilfred” dares to ask: what if your mental breakdown is the most honest moment of your life? What if the voice in your head isn’t something to silence, but something to listen to, especially when it’s telling dick jokes?

Wilfred represents the part of us that refuses to play along with the farce of normality. He sniffs out the hypocrisy in Ryan’s family, the cowardice in his friends, and the rot at the heart of every polite interaction. He is, in many ways, Ryan’s subconscious revolt against a life lived on autopilot.

It’s no accident that Ryan meets Wilfred at his lowest point. He’s suicidal not because he wants to die, but because he doesn’t know how to live. Wilfred doesn’t save Ryan with self-help cliches or pharmaceuticals, he drags him through absurdity until Ryan sees the game for what it is. Not a test to be passed, but a joke to be told well.

In the final season, the show doubles down on ambiguity. Wilfred might be a hallucination. Or a trickster god. Or some ancient being teaching Ryan spiritual lessons in the only way Ryan will accept. Or he might just be a dog and Ryan is insane.

The brilliance of “Wilfred” is that it never tells you the answer. Like any good philosophical riddle, it trusts the question to do the work. It doesn’t resolve — it disturbs. It doesn’t comfort — it challenges.

And maybe that’s what makes it feel true.

In a world screaming for certainty, “Wilfred” howls for ambiguity. It’s a show that understands mental illness not as a glitch to be fixed, but as a symptom of something deeper: a culture that has lost touch with play, instinct, and wonder.

So if you ever find yourself talking to a man in a dog suit, don’t panic. Sit down. Light a joint. Listen. He may not be real. But he might just be right.

From Absurdist to Nihilist (Tentatively): Watching the World Undermine Meaning

I never expected to inch toward nihilism. For years, absurdism kept me afloat. Camus’ defiance in the face of meaninglessness, the idea that you can laugh at the chaos even when it’s crushing you. That you can push the boulder up the hill again and again and still find joy — or at least rebellion — in the act.

But lately, I’ve been staring at that hill and wondering if it’s even worth approaching anymore.

The world feels like it’s daring us to stop believing. The U.S. is caught in a feedback loop of delusion and decay. Billionaires play empire while the rest of us drown in rent, debt, heatwaves, and endless headlines. Climate collapse isn’t creeping anymore; it’s sprinting. The political system’s not broken, it’s working exactly as designed to protect capital and crush dissent. The cruelty isn’t a glitch; it’s a feature.

I used to think absurdism gave me a way through it; that laughing at the system, mocking it, refusing to surrender meaning to it, was a form of resistance. And maybe it still is. But there’s a point where the laugh feels hollow. Where the defiance feels like theater, and the audience left the building years ago.

I’m not fully gone. Not yet. There’s still a part of me that wants to spit in the face of despair and dare it to flinch. That wants to imagine Sisyphus happy, even if only out of spite.

But I’d be lying if I said nihilism isn’t whispering louder lately. Not the cartoon nihilism that gets misrepresented — not the “nothing matters so do whatever” kind — but the cold, empty realization that maybe there really is no justice coming. No redemption arc. No meaning to extract or invent. Just survival, until we can’t anymore.

I don’t know if this shift is a phase, a spiral, or a new state of being. But I know I’m not alone in feeling it. The world is making nihilists faster than it makes meaning.

And maybe admitting that — even tentatively — is the first honest thing I’ve done in a while.

Why Do Republicans Want More Babies but Hate Sex?

There’s a bill that’s been proposed by Republicans that bans pornography. Shocking, I know. They want more babies but less people having sex. Make it make sense. Now, I don’t watch porn anymore. I haven’t in two years. I didn’t have an addiction to it. I just wanted to see how long I could go without watching it. I think this ban is an infringement on freedom of expression though.

Republicans love to lecture us about birthrates. “We’re not having enough kids!” they cry, as if they solution is to just start raw-dogging for America. They panic over “declining family values,” warn about demographic collapse, and push policies to encourage more births. But there’s one little problem: they hate sex.

Not just certain kinds of sex–all of it. They fight against sex education, demonize contraception, and lose their minds over anything outside of straight, married, God-fearing intercourse. They’re not just anti-abortion. They’re anti-sex, anti-pleasure, and anti-autonomy.

So let’s ask the obvious:

If they want more babies, why are they so hostile toward the thing that makes babies?

Because it was never about babies.

It’s about control.

Sex, when divorced from shame and fear becomes power–especially for women, LGBTQ+ people, and anyone outside their rigid moral framework. If people can enjoy sex without “consequences,” the entire structure of conservative power starts to wobble. They lose the ability to use pregnancy as punishment. They lose the ability to gatekeep morality. They lose the leash.

So they push abstinence-only education, attack access to birth control, and slut-shame anyone who dares enjoy themselves, even if it’s masturbation when you’re by yourself, pulling your pud, and just having a good old time by your lonesome. All this while pretending it’s about “protecting life.”

Let’s be real right now:

They don’t want you to make babies. They want you to suffer the consequences.

Their nightmare may not be low birthrates. It may be a liberated population that can’t be guilt-tripped, manipulated, or forced into compliance. That’s why they push forced birth while demonizing the sex that leads to it. It’s not hypocrisy. It’s strategy.

And it’s working–unless we call it what it is and burn their moral scaffolding to the ground.

Review of The Conquest of Bread

I just finished reading anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, and it was like stepping out of the haze of despair and into a blueprint for a different world, a world that doesn’t just rage against capitalism but offers a vision for what should replace it. Kropotkin didn’t just theorize revolution, he laid out the bones of a society built on mutual aid, voluntary cooperation, and the abolition of property as power. For someone like me–driven by a mix of anti-capitalism, misanthropic fire, and a stubborn belief that another world has to be possible–this book hit hard.

Kropotkin’s critique of capitalism goes beyond the surface-level arguments I was used to. He attacked not just the exploitation of labor, but the entire premise that anyone should hoard the means of survival while others suffer. He makes a moral argument without falling into moralism. It’s pragmatic and humane all at once. What stood out to me most was his insistence that revolution must not merely destroy but create. Bread first. Housing next. Then libraries, education, beauty. He reminds us that revolution must be immediate and sustaining.

Before reading the book, I knew I was an anti-capitalist, but I didn’t yet know how to articulate much of a vision. I leaned toward libertarian socialism, distrusted hierarchy, and wanted action, not just analysis. Kropotkin didn’t just validate those instincts; he gave them clarity. He fused my longing for direct action with a plan that doesn’t rely on state power. He made me think bigger: not just about resisting capitalism, but building the scaffolding of its replacement in our daily lives.

The book also sharpened my skepticism of so-called progressive compromises. Kropotkin pulls no punches in calling out the failure of reformism and electoralism. He gave me permission to imagine what happens after the collapse; how to build networks, systems, and support structures that don’t mirror the oppressive systems we fight.

Reading the book didn’t convert me; it confirmed me. It hardened my resolve to fight for socialism in a way that isn’t just about changing who’s in charge but about ending the very idea of bosses altogether. It reminded me that the chaos I crave isn’t destruction for its own sake. It’s the fertile ground where something better can grow.

America 2035

A dear friend of mine gave me the idea to write a blog about what will the U.S. be like if we continue on the course we’re on right now. I jotted it down in my own personal journal and thought I’d share it here. Let me know what you think.

If America stays the course it’s on now with no correction, no revolution, no collective awakening then 2035 will not be some sort of dystopian nightmare. It’ll be something worse. It’ll be a comfortable, numbing decline punctuated by chaos, distraction, and denial.

Corporations will no longer need to whisper in politicians’ ears, they will write the laws themselves. Amazon will own the postal service. Google will handle public education logistics. A few tech CEOs will rotate through cabinet positions like it’s a TED Talk residency. Elections will still happen, but mostly to decide which billionaire’s PAC can out-psyop the other.

The Midwest will experience a new Dust Bowl. Florida real estate will be underwater, but people will still buy beach homes thanks to delusion. Power grids in the South will collapse under summer heat, and water shortages will trigger hydration riots in Arizona. Don’t worry though, your smart fridge will still work as long as you don’t mind watching an ad every time you open it.

The rich and wealthy will live in gated green tech bubbles, shuttled by autonomous Teslas between sanitized, sensor-laden smart cities. Everyone else though? They live in logistics deserts, under-policed until they riot, then over-policed for sport. The economy has metastasized. People livestream their labor for tips, like Twitch but with more sweat and desperation.

Fascism will not wear jackboots. It wears athleisure. It smiles. It hosts a morning show, but it also bans books, surveils dissent, and locks up people in ICE-style “resilience camps” for protesting. The courts are rubber stamps. The media is infotainment sludge. The line between cop, soldier, and “private security consultant” has fully blurred.

The right will have armed militias, billionaire funding, and a 24/7 propaganda network. The left is still subtweeting each other over theoretical frameworks and canceling organizers for old tweets. Direct action is rare and criminalized. Hope is commodified. Revolution is a brand. Every year, a new savior candidate promises change, only to be eaten alive by the machine.

Citizenship is no longer a birthright. It’s a subscription service. The U.S. exports cultural dominance while its internal infrastructure rots. We’ll stream images of freedom to the world while internally dismantling it piece by piece. Freedom of speech remains, but mostly because no one in power takes anyone without a million followers seriously anymore.

Is it all doom? Not necessarily.

This future isn’t inevitable, but it’s likely if we continue business as usual: treating politics like fandom, trusting the system to reform itself, and refusing to disrupt the real levers of power.

We don’t need utopia. We just need rupture. Resistance. Imagination. Something that breaks the loop. But if we wait ten more years to try, we may not get the chance again.

Ash and Seed

The cities fell quietly. Not with fire or fanfare, but with a flicker. Supply chains snapping like old rope, currencies crumbling into irrelevance, and governments too bloated to breathe. People had waited for rescue. None came. Then, something stranger happened: they stopped waiting.

Maya lived in one of the Transition Zones, carved out of the skeleton of what had once been Pittsburgh. Skyscrapers stood hollow, colonized by vertical gardens and data relays. Streets were no longer roads, but corridors of barterless exchange: food grown by solar-fueled machines, distributed by drones with no masters.

She remembered the old world in fragments: clocks, ads, the endless scrolling of fake urgency. In this new world, days were marked by need and contribution. Some days she coded for the mesh network. Other days she repaired the water-capture towers or helped with conflict mediation—though those requests were rarer now.

There was no money. No one starved. The idea of “earning a living” had become as quaint as leeches in medicine. What did it mean to earn what had always been a birthright?

Occasionally, envoys came from outside the Zone—wandering emissaries from collapsing enclaves or liberated factories. Some brought new blueprints, others just stories. Maya loved the stories. One woman spoke of how a collective in former Indonesia had wired up an entire island to run itself, then dismantled their last police drone ceremonially, like a funeral for fear.

In the evenings, Maya sat under the wind trees, their turbines singing above, and read aloud to anyone who wandered by. Tonight it was McCarthy. Tomorrow, maybe Marx. No one made her do this. That was the point.

They lived without rulers or markets, not because they had to—but because they finally could.

And in the ruins of profit, something strange had taken root:

Hope.

But not the kind you wait for.

The kind you build.