The Last Word

Issue #576
™

October 2022

Surprise! Splat!

Surprise! Splat!
That’s the sound made by my spectacular road trip to the western U.S. of September 7 to 15! I
call this trip the September Surprise because surprises lurked behind every corner! Most were great,
some were hilarious, and a few were maddening, but you’re gonna peep ‘em all!
Celebrity look-alikes abounded. A Clint Eastwood look-alike was seen at a Casey’s convenience
store in Le Roy, Illinois.
I noticed someone had discarded peanuts in a urinal at a Holiday gas station in Mitchell, South
Dakota. Mitchell is also the town where—during my 2016 trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park—
customers at Ruby Tuesday found their faces farted in because they kept bothering the server when the
restaurant wouldn’t accept an entree coupon to pay for soup. You may also recall that during last
year’s trip to Wind Cave National Park, people beered at a motel pool in Mitchell—violating an
Allowed Cloud.
Back to the September Surprise! An Exxon restroom in Sturgis, South Dakota, was enhanced by
some mild ruinment as well. There was pee-soaked toilet paper on the toilet seat, and the garbage can
lid was sitting on the floor next to the toilet.
At a motel pool in Sheridan, Wyoming, an aging couple drank beer, which violated that inn’s
Allowed Cloud. The next morning in the hotel breakfast room, I saw 2
uproarious celebrity look-alikes: Jeff Bezos and David Canary.
LODGING AT...
At Pompeys Pillar—a formation in Montana that was one of the
many points of interest on this trip—I saw a Dick Cheney look-alike North Sioux City SD
dump what appeared to be a cup of urine in the parking lot. Sheridan WY
At a Cenex station in Bozeman, Montana, there was pee all over Coeur d’Alene ID
the toilet seat, and there was toilet paper all over the top of the toilet. Boise ID
Our time in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was a downright spectacle. Wells NV
We slogged into a Shari’s restaurant for din-din. There was a big line of Rock Springs WY
customers waiting to be seated. The host explained to one departing York NE
guest that the cash register did not have change in it, and that all the Decatur IL
coinage was stored in a safe in a back room. Retrieving the change held up the line, and the host
disappeared for perhaps 15 minutes. This caused incoming customers to give up and leave little by
little. Finally, I decided to leave and said, loudly enough to be heard, “Let’s leave.” In addition, the
toilet in our hotel room wouldn’t flush.
That was the night before I trekked
through Washington and Oregon—meaning I’ve
now been to every state in the lower 48.
The toilet in our motel room in Boise,
Idaho, rocked when you sat on it, and the
refrigerator was broken. As in Sheridan, people
beered at the hotel pool in principled
disobedience of the rules. A group of young men
was having a beer party. They left a Bud Light
can on the pool deck, and they threw 2 beer cans
into the hamper with the dirty towels. I bet the
inn was in for a rude awakening when they
washed the towels and heard something
clanking around in the washing machine!
Craters of the Moon—a fine national
monument in Idaho—had an extremely strenuous
trail featuring several small, rugged caves. We
lost our keys on this trail. Read below for the
exciting outcome of that incident...
Keep reading...
The keys were soon found.
Some real disappointments awaited at
some motels on the way back. More on that later.
When we stopped for a picnic lunch at a
rest area near Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, we noticed
someone had pooped on the ground at the picnic
shelter.
On the evening before we got home, we devoured dinner at a Burger Theory in Decatur,
Illinois. A group of 3 people that was already seated
did a “let’s leave” because they weren’t being
waited on. They simply walked out of the
restaurant.
Biddle gibzz!

Putting Dell through hell

Imagine a new desktop computer being sold
in 2022 that has no CD drive or proper line-in or
monitor port. Imagine also that the lack of a CD
drive is despite the computer in the photo clearly
having a CD drive.
A month ago, I ordered a new Dell to
replace my 8-year-old machine that kept sputtering
and beeping. This new desktop was one of the
cheapest models, but it appeared to be good
enough. The photo did of course show it had a CD
drive and USB ports that are standard on new
desktops.
When this oversized computer arrived and I
started setting it up, I noticed that while it had the USB ports, it did not have the line-in port that was
also standard. Strike one! I would have had to order a new line-in cable that would fit in a USB port
and hog it. Then I noticed that—shockingly—the computer didn’t have the right kind of monitor port.
The cable from my monitor wouldn’t fit in the port. Strike two! I would have had to order a new
monitor cable.
These days, when you buy a new desktop, you just assume it has the right line-in and monitor
ports. You don’t even consider the possibility that it doesn’t.
Nothing on Dell’s website suggested it didn’t. But the third
strike came when I noticed the new machine didn’t even
have a CD drive. Instead, it just had an embossed rectangle
where the CD drive belonged.
All together now as we sway back and forth: It’s one,
two, three strikes, you’re out at the ol’ ballgame!
Dell’s website was unambiguous. The computer
pictured on the site very clearly had a CD drive. There’s zero
wiggle room on this. I also couldn’t rely on any
documentation that came with the computer, because it
didn’t have any. All it had was just a small sheet with a
diagram of all the ports with an indecipherable symbol
pointing at each.
Then I noticed other people had also complained
about the lack of a CD drive and correct ports. Dell can’t very
well argue that this model doesn’t have a drive, considering
other folks have posted reviews that seem to indicate that
theirs has one, and somebody from Dell said in an answer to
a question that it has one. Some reviewers also said this
model was slower than the 10-year-old computers they were
replacing.
So I boxed up this new computer and shipped it back. I then ordered a computer by a different
company—which was much cheaper anyway.
I spent the rest of the afternoon arguing with family about all of this. I was told that it would
somehow be my fault if the computer got stolen from the porch before it got picked up. Um, no. In my
America, we don’t go on other people’s porches and steal things. After I packed it up and put it on the
porch, it was no longer my responsibility. If it got stolen from the porch, I was no more to blame than if
it had been lost in transit. I was told that I should have buyed a much more expensive model—not
because it might have a CD drive, but just because. It was like I was a polished businessman with
millions of dollars. I was told that I should have checked to see if the new computer was “solid state.”
Maybe I should have ordered one with an 8-track player, not a CD drive.
It turned out that Dell also signed me up for a service contract I didn’t order, which would have
cost me more hard-earned dough if I hadn’t returned that computer.
Now that I have a new computer from another company, I found Windows 11 had at least 2
major problems of its own that will make it unusable unless they are fixed. I asked for help on the
laughable Microsoft Community board and was—as is almost always the case there—given “solutions”
that did not work. When I pointed out that they did not work, I was first ignored, and later I was given
the same failed “solutions” again. One of the problems was that the volume was so low that you had to
strain to hear it. With every setting at 100%, it was still much too low. Several websites also gave
“fixes” that did not work. After a week of this garbage, it became obvious that the problem was that
Windows 11 downloads a faulty driver every time you use the line-in port. This meant I had to spend
$20 ordering a new line-in cable to fit a USB port after all. It also renders the line-in port useless and
monopolizes a USB port. I went through the trouble of getting a computer with a line-in port only for it
to be wasted. I suspect Microsoft deliberately put out a bad driver just to make line-in ports obsolete.
Yet there’s no guarantee a new cable will work, because Windows 11 might download a defective USB
driver too, given its record so far. I don’t know yet, because this cable doesn’t work at all.
The other problem is that the screen keeps dimming at random. Microsoft recommended
adjusting the brightness slider and changing other settings. But there is no slider, nor do the other
settings exist. Another website also has these “solutions”, but somebody replied to correctly note,
“There’s no slider. Period. End of story.” So far, the only solution is to turn the monitor off and back on
again, and I can’t even be sure this will work forever.
This is the latest example of how society is at the point where you can prove something in plain
sight and people will still argue about it. It’s a fact: There is no brightness slider. Yet Microsoft and
others are insisting that there is. The Dell that I ordered had no CD drive, yet Dell’s very website said it
had one. President Biden said in a 60 Minutes interview that the pandemic is over, but some of the
puritans in his administration insist he didn’t say it—that is, when they’re between red-baiting press
conferences.
Even before things got to this sorry stage, it was already pretty bad as people who claimed to be
experts kept giving bad advice. The fact that none of the advice on Microsoft Community or on
websites worked reminds me of the guy on the old BBS’s who claimed to be a Macintosh expert with a
super-high IQ even though none of his advice worked and he could barely form a complete sentence.
His lack of elementary communication skills placed him on par with George W. Bush and Andy
Beshear. Overall, the self-anointed experts are spoiled and intellectually lazy.
Meanwhile, people who have ordered that Dell model after I shipped mine back say in their
reviews that theirs has a CD drive—but it’s broken.

With hotel pools, it’s sink or swim

Not to belabor the point, but some hotels have
earned themselves a log.
From the world’s most remote villages to the
most bustling cities to the poorest shantytowns to the
swankiest suburbs, people have one thing in common:
Swimming has positive health benefits. Swimming is
so beneficial that even the worst criminals have been
successful at demanding a right to a daily swim.
Domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph sent a series of letters
to the Colorado Springs Gazette complaining that the
supermax prison where he is confined allowed him
only 1½ hours of swimming each day. The old
Conservative Fool of the Day blog noted how Rudolph
was living it up, noting his entry was from the “I
murdered 3 people and all I got was this lousy
swimming pool” department.
The lake at A.J. Jolly County Park has been closed for swimming for 30 years because of
pollution and because geese kept shitting on people, yet Eric Rudolph groused about having “only” 1½
hours of swimming each day—something law-abiding people in our area rarely get to do. That’s not to
mention the often malicious closures of pools and beaches in 2020—a few of which continue.
So when hard-working families and individuals pay for a swimming pool, they damn well
better get to use it.
We’ve experienced decades of closed motel pools. I think back to when I was a youngster, when
my folks toiled daily just so we could all crowd into the Plymouth Horizon with some Snack Mate
cheese and Wet Ones, travel hundreds of miles while playing with a View-Master or a traffic sign bingo
game, and guess the odds of whether the pool at the inn would be closed. Swimming was a great way
to unwind after an exciting day of sightseeing. I don’t go on vacation just to watch TV. Radio, yes. But
not TV.
On a family trip in 1981, we bopped into a Milwaukee motel we had booked—part of the then-
dominant Holiday Inn chain—and the first thing we noticed was that the pool was completely dry. Not
a drop of agua in it. It remained closed throughout our stay.
During a 2007 trip, a hotel in Ashland that we had booked also had a closed pool. In addition,
so many things in our room were broken that we marched down to the front desk and demanded a
refund. We then got a different motel.
St. Louis in 1989 wasn’t a complete loss, as the pool was open a majority of the time. But one
day, we found it was closed for cleaning during peak hours. This prompted another teenage guest to
say something like, “I wish that guy would clean the pool instead of just standing there playing with
himself.”
There have been many other motel pools that were not usable because either it felt like someone
had dumped a vat of ice in it or it was full of sticks and leaves.
As with lots of other bad things, the prevalence of closed pools in hotels has been skyrocketing
precipitously in recent years. It happened twice on my recent trip out west. Most outrageous was a
Comfort Inn in Rock Springs, Wyoming. This hotel advertised such a nice pool that we constructed
much of our travel route around it and even paid more than we otherwise would have. The journey is
the destination! But can you guess what we discovered when we got there?
That’s right. A sign on the door said the pool was “closed for maintenance.” This was despite
the fact that the pool was clearly full of water. When we saw the sign, we uttered a few choice words so
that the clerk could hear us—thus improving the mischief rating for this trip.
If we had known that this inn was practicing false advertising when it claimed it had a pool, we
would have booked cheaper lodging and mapped out our route differently. We spent extra dough and
made a special effort to map our route with this hotel in mind, and a major feature it had advertised
wasn’t even open.
The following night, something similar happened at a Days Inn in York, Nebraska. But at least
this time, we didn’t build the route around the hotel or pay as much. Like the rest of our lodging, we
had booked it in advance, and the sign out front still advertised a pool. That too was false advertising.
A sign on the door for the pool said the pool was closed because of hail damage. How can an indoor
pool be closed for hail damage? Besides that, it was September, and hailstorms are ridiculously rare in
Nebraska in September. An online review from a week earlier also noted the pool closure, so the hotel
had plenty of time to stop advertising a pool that wasn’t open. In fact, since there had been no
hailstorms there in months, that should have been plenty of time to fix an indoor pool.
The situation in York didn’t get any less stupid. The next morning, I noticed the breakfast room
was filthy, with crumbs everywhere. There was hardly even any food. There were a few slices of toast
scattered about, but there was nothing to put on the toast like jam, cream cheese, or peanut butter. An
elderly woman complained to the clerk about the sad state of the breakfast room. The frustrated clerk
blamed it all on Sam’s Club. There are lots of things in this world that are Sam’s Club’s fault, but the
breakfast room being dirty isn’t one of them.
Dear hotels: Stop advertising pools that are closed.

Bubbdle!
Introducing Bubbdle!
You may have heard of Wordle, the
online game where you guess a word. There’s
also Heardle, where you guess a song, but it’s
usually one from the past few years when
most music sucked. There’s been a few good
songs out there over the past couple years, but
many of them have been banned from radio
and other venues because our rulers don’t like
the message. But there’s also Heardle 80s,
which usually comes up with a message
saying the song can’t be played because—
unlike in civilized countries—the song is blocked in the United States.
I don’t play games like Wordle and Heardle, because I only have time for a game called reality.
There’s other things I need to do.
But now I have an idea for a new game like this: Bubbdle! This game would show a photo of a
celebrity blowing a bubble with bubble gum, and you would try to guess who it is. It would start out
with a frame of the bubble obscuring the celeb’s face. Then—like a film rolling backwards—the bub
would diminish in size, revealing more of their visage.
 You just laughed because I mentioned bubble gum.

More truckloads of trouble

I go away for a few days and come back to find the neighborhood in smithereens.
I thought we settled the construction truck noise issue in Bellevue a few years ago—leaving
mostly Dayton to deal with it—but now folks on Facebook have suddenly been noticing it again, along
with new problems that the city refuses to deal with. One report said the heavy trucks—which serve a
Dayton gentrification land grab—have been speeding down Fairfield Avenue once every few minutes.
It was suggested that the closed section of Ky. 8 be repaired so trucks could use it instead, and that the
railroad should give up some of their trackage to help fix that road. Actually, that problem could be
solved if Ky. 8 was routed up Tower Hill Road and along North Fort Thomas Avenue like it should be
—allowing Fort Thomas’s wealthiest neighborhoods to share the burden.
It was noted that the recent increase in truck traffic is also inflicting structural damage on
buildings in Bellevue. Complaints to our local state representative have received no reply. (More proof
that the Democrats today are the Republicans of 20 years ago.) In addition, the trucks have begun
invading residential streets like Ward Avenue, where thru truck traffic is supposed to be prohibited.
Somebody also posted that the trucks were overloaded, did not obey weight limits, and did not have
covers—which is illegal. That’s not to mention Covert Run Pike: A commenter there said trucks were
“ruining what street we have left” to serve a gentrification project along that road. (Yes, the magic
word was used.)
Someone called one of the truck companies to complain that trucks were disobeying traffic
lights. The supervisor there promptly cussed out the complainant and hung up. That alone should be
cause for the company to have to forfeit the privilege of using Bellevue streets.
It was noted that laws designed to regulate trucks are not enforced, because truck companies
pay off some local politicians.
In another thread, someone pointed out that construction trucks were dropping nails onto the
roadway, which gave motorists flat tires.
Wait! There’s more! The Manhattan Harbour boondoggle required the “temporary” closure of
the road behind the floodwall that was widely used as a shortcut linking Ky. 8. But this “temporary”
closure lasted perhaps a decade before the
road was reportedly finished in August.
But it appears as if the road was actually
reopened only to serve the new luxury
housing, as signs have now been posted
there banning thru traffic—so passenger
cars are not allowed to use this shortcut.
It’s a general rule that when you
see a “no thru traffic” sign, it’s actually
the best shortcut there is. Nobody who
drives a regular passenger car who has
even a shred of backbone gives a shit
about these signs, because they only exist
to shelter select neighborhoods. The
greater point is that it’s a public street
built with tax dollars, so the
neighborhood has no right keeping the
public away. In addition, construction
trucks abused the rest of Dayton and
Bellevue by using residential streets for thru traffic, so residents of luxury homes who benefited from
that have no business telling the public they can’t use “their” street for thru traffic.
Naturally, somebody attacked members of the Facebook group for daring to complain. But he’s
not from Bellevue or Dayton, nor does he live here. He was just marauding into our group to stir up
trouble—sort of like how the gentrification thought police stampedes into our cities to start trouble.
A wurma wurm wurm wurm! A wurma wurma wurm wurm! A
wurma wurma wuuuuurrrrrm! A wurma wurma! Ding!
You’ve got to hear this!
Every so often, I search on YouTube for the old bubble gum commercial in which a cartoon of
George Washington blew a bubble. This commersh has never turned up.
Recently when I searched for it, I found a different video about beegee. However, the clip’s
cooltagonist does not appear to be the person running the YouTube channel. Suffice it to say, the
channel seems to be run by the sort of person to whom we might say, “You’re weird.” So I tracked
down the cooltagonist’s TikTok channel where she originally posted the video. TikTok is owned by the
Chinese Communist Party and heavily censors content to meet the party agenda, but if I didn’t know
any better, I’d think YouTube was the same way, so what’s the difference?
In any event, you’ve got to see this video—but not because the cooltagonist blows a bub the size
of her head. Rather, it’s because of the music included in the clip...

https://www.tiktok.com/@theonlytawny/video/7101305753331436846

That music is like Electric Company music for the 2020s! Since the rise of online videos, there
have been other evolutions in this genre of music. This piece of music seems to have evolved from the
music used a few years ago in all the “family vlogs” in which every wealthy family did the same dumb,
boring, wasteful things in every video. That music in turn seems to be the progeny of the music used in
a campaign commercial in the 2002 Senate race in Montana. The music bed in the Senate ad was like
Electric Company music but with less of the “wokka wokka” sound that was once common in pop music
but seemed to suddenly go away when the 1970s ended. One of the last examples of a big pop hit using
that sound was “Mama Can’t Buy You Love” by Elton John.
Also, it wasn’t until many years after the “wokka wokka” sound vanished that I knew how to
spell it. I could never spell or describe it until an online troll mentioned it. I didn’t come up with that
idea.

Fly away!
I miss John Denver.
I know that by the 1980s, his music
seemed out of place in a world of Men At
Work, Eddy Grant, and Scandal. But that
was also when he testified in Congress
against music censorship.
Yet there’s a story about John
Denver that I just can’t resist including
here. About 15 or 20 years ago, somebody regaled me with something rather amusing that happened in
their youth. According to legend, their family buyed a brand new stereo. The appliance store included
a bunch of records with this sparkling new device—just to show how well the turntable worked.
And one of the records was by—you guessed it!—John Denver.
But the kiddos weren’t that much into the bespectacled singer-songwriter. So they hauled the
John Denver record into the backyard and played frisbee with it.
Odds are that the disc was roodledy-doodledy after that.
The kids got skeeped at by the oldsters for exposing the John Denver record to near-certain
destroyment.

A person spit food all over Monopoly money

Here’s another hilarious story from the abyss of high school. I think this was from junior year.
 The classroom had an old, dilapidated Monopoly game. You may know about the time we all
kept arguing while playing Monopoly and the teacher snuck up on us, grabbed all the pieces, and
made us put the game away. People would also cheat by wadding the money into a tiny ball about the
size of a marble, stuffing it in their shoes, and making
it magically appear later. The money was ruined for
good, as each bill was crumpled beyond hope. But I’m
straining my memory to recall another uproarious
incident.
One day, we were playing Monopoly, and a
student was chomping on either bubble gum or some
other viand. He was acting like a slob and letting
particles of food fly everywhere. I don’t think I
noticed until some girl commented on it. She said
something like, “Look at him spittin’ food
everywhere. Look at him spittin’ all over the money.”
She was addressing the offender but was using the
third person.
Sure enough, the cooltagonist of this story had
indeed spit huge gobs of chewed food onto the
money. Sometimes after a snack or meal, you have
softened hunks of food stuck inside your mouth, so
you spit them out in a projectile fashion. The pieces of
food often stick to walls or other items, and they dry
there. In this story, I think it was gum mixed with other food. I don’t think it was just the money that
got spit upon but also the title deeds, board, and Community Chest and Chance cards. All caked with
food.
Much later, we played Monopoly again, and I remember seeing huge, beige chunks of dried
food stuck to the money.

In defense of Kroger (as difficult as it is)

My advancing age seems to confer more liberty to criticize corporations, because soon I’ll be
less dependent on these companies (i.e., I’ll be dead). Then again, it’s not like I wasn’t criticizing big
corporations when I was 19. By that time, many companies had already earned it. Play stupid games,
win stupid prizes. Right, Kmart?
This story is about our friendly neighborhood Kroger. Our local Krogie-Wogie is a mainstay for
groceries, socializing, and smiling our asses off. Operation KroGum deals with the availability of
bubble gum there, but there should also be Operation KroDoughnuts, Operation KroBananas, and
Operation KroJuice. Lately, I’ve noticed you can no longer buy refrigerated apple juice at this Kroger
location. It had already been reduced to just one brand. In fact, there’s lots of things you used to be able
to buy at Kroger that you can’t get there anymore. It’s slim pickings, and it gets slimmer all the time.
Let this sink in for a moment. You can’t get apple juice, of all things! Something as basic as apple
juice is no longer available at our local supermarket.
Recently, when I visited this Kroger, I asked an employee if they still had any apple juice. He
said they no longer sell it, because the company that makes or distributes it has decided to stop
delivering it there. In other words, this wasn’t Kroger’s doing. Rather, a juice company has taken it
upon themselves to just not deliver this product to this store.
This doesn’t absolve Kroger of blame for other bad policies. I just found a post on Facebook
from a man claiming his local Kroger no longer accepts cash—even though cash is clearly labeled as
“legal tender for all debts.” But try pointing this out to your average World Economic Forum apologist.
They will claim that while cash is “legal tender for all debts”, that’s different from being able to buy
anything with it. The critic of Kroger’s no-cash policy said, “I am boycotting Kroger and their liberal
views.” But a cashless society is the furthest thing from liberal. Until a couple years ago, people rightly
criticized a cashless society and the accompanying social credit system as being “right-wing fascist.”
Now the same policy is assailed as “liberal.”
Perhaps Kroger was trying to appease the World Economic Forum, because we’ve all seen what
happens when somebody doesn’t: WEF partisans throw a big fit or even assault whoever challenges
them.

A person stole bubble gum and got it stuck in their sock

There have been lots of very
similar stories floating around out there
about people stealing candy from
drugstores: they stole candy and hid it in
their pockets, they stole gum and got
skeeped at for taking it to school, they
stole gum and threw the wrappers all
over the floor at school, etc.
Our June ish told of a feller who
stole from Walgreens by shoving a whole
box of Bazooka bubble gum in his sock.
Now I’ve received another story that’s
almost exactly like that—except this
character chewed the gum before placing
it in his sock.
After stealing bubble gum from a
drugstore, the star of this yarn predictably took the gum to school. He chewed about 5 pieces all at
once. Probably even bubbled! But he didn’t want to be caught chewing gum at school, so instead of
depositing the used wad of gum in the trash, he stuck it in his sock.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, this ruined his sock for good.

NKU ableism
Gosh, our schools are run by Nazis!
Every other part of society could be humming along nicely, yet our schools seem to be in
permanent shambles. It’s not even new. It’s been going on as long as anyone can remember.
If you ask me, NKU is pretty damn Nazi, so it’s fair game to expose it in these pages. I was
reminded of this when my research led me to a short piece from many years ago about NKU installing
new buttons on its doors for wheelchair access—which allowed the university to pretend it cared about
making the campus more accessible. Yet this was after NKU complained about people using the
buttons they had, allowed the buttons to break, and closed the “secret” tunnel. NKU didn’t care about
accommodating disabilities back then, and it’s been even worse in recent years.
Some of the most ableist people in America are the bombastic storm troopers who run our
schools—universities included.
Wouldn’t it be a shame if I exposed more of what NKU really thinks about the disabled? When I
was a student there, the school had an office designed to serve disabled students, and one of its officials
let the mask slip about what he really felt about students he was supposed to serve. He once mocked a
student behind her back because of her disability. One other time, he launched a diatribe complaining
about the fact that primary and high schools had to accommodate disabled children because of laws
like IDEA and the ADA. He worked in an office for the disabled, yet his views on disability were 20
years behind even IDEA.
Sadly, it was too easy for me to bite my tongue about all this—until he started displaying a
negative attitude towards me personally. It’s still staggering to comprehend.
NKU is of course not the only offender. Other institutions of higher book-burnin’ are just as bad
these days. (It’s close.) Schools at every level have zero regard for laws designed to protect disabled
students. None whatsoever. They claim to be inclusive. They lie. It’s not just an honest mistake but
intentional fraud.
 All over America and around the world, people are getting together, bands are playing, toilets
are flushing—yet schools are more fascist than ever before.

Looking out for #1

I just had a cool thought.
You may be familiar with Billboard’s legendary Hot 100 singles and tracks chart—the most
authoritative chart in the beeswax. At one time, you probably wished you could sing or play an
instrument, so you could open up the latest ish of Billboard at the library and see your name basking at
#1! But it’s clear that these days, you don’t even need any musical talent to chart.
Censorship has ravaged artistic freedom and the music industry more and more lately. It’s
worse now than in the PMRC era. More and more songs are shunned by radio and other media because
of wrongthink. Since 2020, there have been numerous fine tracks—some by legendary acts—that have
protested against COVID lockdowns. Artists ranging from Van Morrison to a few new novelty acts
have given us plenty of great tunes about the crisis. But have you ever heard any of these songs on the
radio?
These amazing songs have never charted—in part because of their lack of radio play. Yet talent-
free bores who treat their fans like shit appear at #1 week after week. It’s as if radio rewards performers
for pitiful conduct.
Radio isn’t the only factor in compiling the Hot 100. Music sales has long been a factor too—but
that requires a record label. But here’s the good news: Since 2013, the Hot 100 has also used YouTube
views as a factor.
This would seem to indicate that anybody could post their own music on YouTube and—in
theory—shoot all the way to the top of the chart. You don’t even have to be primarily a musician. You
can record your own music, and if it gets enough YouTube views, it will chart. Or at least it should. It’s
possible YouTube will delete it for wrongthink before it charts, or that YouTube has some loophole that
says music must be backed by an established record label to be counted. But why not test these
theories?
The ease with which one may post their own videos these days should give rise to the people’s
music—even elevating its chart success. If Casey Kasem was living today, you might have heard him
counting down a countdown of this innovative new music.

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