Wagie Life

Wake up. It’s noon. Turn over on the mattress and look at my phone. No texts, but over 40 email messages. All are advertisements for products. I roll…


Curmudgeon 4

How to convince me that you are a bad writer or speaker: “Take” preceded by fast, quick or hot. “Convo,” “conversate,” or “commentate.” “Pricing” or…


A Prayer for Richard Power

Believe it or not, many Christians come to pray that God kill them. I want no part of that theology, so please say a different prayer for me. Pray…


Three Windows

There had been a brief introduction. The girl said she was 18 (they always were) and had traveled from West Virginia to L.A. in the hopes of becoming…


Nomocanon of Mephistopheles, Part 3

Now this new liberalism, this new blood-libel is harsher, and harder to escape than bigotry. Slavs shall never be respected---but we don’t actually…


Trigger Finger

Last night, I propped up my laptop, the laptop I am writing this on, in my bathroom sink and put on some porn. I looked at myself in the big mirror…


Nomocanon of Mephistopheles, Part 2

Therefore you do not read Gogol as a man who allowed himself to love whom he desired and hate who he hated but only as a mere satirist against…


Slot Machine Suicide

I am out in Las Vegas with my dumb cousins and things have not gone well. It is not clear to me why, but Gil, Marie, and I just fight and fight and…


Curmudgeon 3

Taxes are easy to criticize, because the rules and the rates are horrible. No person making under $100,000 adjusted for inflation should need more…


Nomocanon of Mephistopheles, Part 1

Above and below Aeropagitica, centuries lagging. To sons of Thrace, Illyria, and Dalmatia, Dacia, From Moesia, may we be eternally condemned To…