Who the Fuck Authorized This?
Cameras are going up everywhere, and nobody seems to be asking the most important fucking question: who authorized government to routinely watch free citizens suspected of absolutely nothing? Liberty isn't being watched more responsibly. Liberty is being left the fuck alone.
The Free Fucking Bacon Problem
Maybe the free fucking bacon isn't really about bacon. Maybe it's about entitlement, responsibility, and what happens when people become so accustomed to somebody else solving every inconvenience that carrying the weight of liberty starts feeling like too much fucking work.
There’s a Special Place in Hell for Speakerphone People
I was just trying to eat breakfast and write in peace when one asshole decided the entire hotel needed to hear his speakerphone conversation. Then another one joined in. Somewhere between the tinny voices and my rapidly deteriorating sanity, I started wondering about entitlement, social awareness, and why the fuck people do this.
Put Your Back Into the Fucking Plow
Having a hard life doesn't give you a claim on somebody else's success. I've been broke. I've failed. I've trusted people I shouldn't have trusted. But nobody was coming to save me, so I got back up and kept fucking moving.
What the Fuck Happened?
A brutal three-hundred-mile motorcycle ride across southeastern New Mexico somehow turned into Texas liquor laws, government-mandated technology, individual liberty, and my general irritation with being protected from myself. I’m not entirely sure how the fuck we got here either.
Someone in My Corner
I thought this week’s lesson was going to be about surviving a new leadership role, monsoon commutes, and a shitty rear tire. Instead, I walked into the garage and found a clean motorcycle—and another reminder that I don’t have to do this fucking life alone anymore.
Florence Is Going to Be Fucking Fine
Arizona has decided lane splitting is reckless driving. I have a simpler question: who’s the fucking victim? A motorcycle doing something a Toyota can’t doesn’t make it reckless, and Florence being uncomfortable doesn’t make it a crime.
Cosmic Voicemail
I haven’t written much this week, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped. If anything, I’m more convinced than ever that the words matter. I survived cardiac arrests, a motorcycle crash, and enough reminders that tomorrow isn’t fucking promised. So I’m writing like I’m leaving a cosmic voicemail behind.
How Times Change
Five years ago, I walked out of a Santa Fe bar humiliated, furious, and absolutely certain I would never fucking return. Last night, I walked back through the same door with my wife. The place had changed. So had I. Apparently, some promises are worth breaking.
Service Dogs and Weak Chins
I went out for Sunday breakfast intending to work on Undertow. Instead, while waiting for a table, I found myself contemplating two completely unrelated observations about humanity: fake fucking service animals and weak chins. So much for the best-laid plans.
Liberty Is Dead
Liberty didn’t die in some spectacular coup. We surrendered it incrementally, one reasonable exception, one permit, one court decision, one camera, one sensor, and one fucking compromise at a time. Eventually, you look down and realize there’s almost nothing left in your hands.
The New Fucking Tea
Someone shot up Santa Fe’s shiny new automated enforcement cameras, and apparently an old friend’s first thought was to ask whether it was me. It wasn’t. But his question got me thinking about cameras, government power, consent of the governed, and what happens when “public property” stops feeling like it belongs to the fucking public.
This Is Us
After weeks of turmoil, Dawna is finally here. At three in the fucking morning, with her asleep beside me and our new life beginning to take shape, I realized something wonderfully simple: my heart is full, my world is quiet, and this feels right.
Fifty-One Fucking Percent
The government can stop me, detain me, accuse me of wrongdoing, drag me into court, and seek money from me; and apparently “more likely than not” is enough. Maybe that’s legally sufficient. I’m increasingly unconvinced that legally sufficient and just are the same fucking thing.
Stand the Fuck By
I’m sitting at home instead of going to work because today I have to defend myself against an allegation made by the government. We’ve become so accustomed to traffic stops that we rarely stop to consider what they actually are: temporary government detention.
Justice Left the Building
I spent the last week watching people navigate a judicial system I once naively believed existed to protect justice and individual liberty. What I found instead was calendars, forms, unanswered calls, endless waiting, and a bureaucracy that seemed to have forgotten the enormous responsibility entrusted to it.
Justice for Whom?
Santa Fe can find the money, technology, and political will for speed cameras and noise sensors, yet when a driver made a U-turn across my path and nearly killed me, the system somehow couldn’t manage basic accountability. So I keep coming back to one question: Who the fuck is the victim?
The Algorithm Was Clearly Written by Men
ChatGPT keeps trying to murder the American paragraph. When I finally called it out, the resulting conversation was fucking hilarious, and inadvertently proved that artificial intelligence has mastered another distinctly human skill: admitting you’re right without ever actually apologizing.
