Tricky dick

Yo! Shout out to Dick Cheney for dying. In addition to being the architect of the modern US surveillance state, he was instrumental in killing hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people across the Middle East, all while enriching himself. He really is the Darth Vader of American history, which is quite impressive considering the numerous villains that this nation has produced.

But what I find impressive in this exact moment is that the internet appears to have gained a memory. They haven’t forgotten the numerous crimes that the late Vice President committed. Remember when he shot a guy in the face? I did! But the internet, thankfully, did not. And there seems to be something fitting about Cheney dying in a moment like this. The Iraq War, after fading from the public mind for over 15 years, seems to have reentered the zeitgeist. This is probably due to the current administration threatening military action against Venezuela. The hypocrisy and tragedy of US foreign policy is back on the menu. Time truly is a flat circle.

But onto bigger news: Vanitas is nearly complete. Which means that we have reached an end of an era. The “James” epoch of this blog is over. I’ve toyed with resurrecting Detective James and considered a sequel to A Shot at the Title. But those ideas have been shelved and, most likely, will be buried in a desert where no one will hear or think of them again. Unlike the Iraq War and the crimes of Dick Cheney, the internet WILL forget.

Vanitas will be available for purchase on November 21st.

don’t go suckin my cock

First off, shout out to whoever is reading this blog. Views have EXPLODED for some inexplicable reason, which leads me to assume one of three things:

  1. I have a stalker on the loose
  2. I’ve attracted the bots
  3. The world is finally recognizing my genius

Obviously option three is the most sensible explanation. I feel honored and vindicated. It’s nice to know that I haven’t wasted hours of my life and millions of words on what has amounted to nothing more than a vanity project. I should be thanking the readers. But instead I’m gonna thank myself for all the blood, sweat, tears and occasionally jizz I’ve poured into this blog. I really am a once in a generation talent.

To all the aspiring writers out there, I would say keep your head up and work hard. But the truth is that artistic genius is the secret ingredient. You either have it or you don’t. And it’s highly likely that you don’t. So instead of pursuing your dreams, I say that you should give up on them. Find something you’re good at. Get a 9 to 5. Marry that girl who dumped you your junior year and spent several months in county and is now on the mend. Have her pop out a fifth child (first for you). Grow your alcohol dependency and live a shallow life until you die of heart failure at age 62. There’s nothing wrong with mediocrity. I mean, that life sounds pathetic to me but it might be right for you.

But thank you to all for the views 🙏 you all are the real ones

2025 NFL uniform ranking (part I. The worst ones)

It’s crunch time.

With a book coming out, it feels like being down three points in the fourth quarter and cramming for the finals all in one. Stress has reached a boiling point. So with a lot on my plate, I need to write about something cheap and easy. And you know me. I always have an opinion about football uniforms.

It’s been a couple years since I’ve done this. So here’s my ranking for all the 2025 NFL uniforms. Unfortunately my beef with Roger Goodell is ongoing so I won’t be able to post pictures. But that’s what the internet is for folks 🤷‍♂️

32. Seattle Seahawks

I think we can all agree that this uniform has overstayed its welcome. Actually it was never welcomed to begin with. It’s just unfortunate that this was the uniform worn during the franchise’s most successful run. But with the Legion of Boom/Russell Wilson/Pete Carroll era over, it’s time to restore the throwbacks to their proper place.

31. Philadelphia Eagles

For the life of me, I will never understand the love of midnight green. It’s boring as shit. And the shading behind the numbers makes the whole thing look dated. This uniform is stuck in the late 90s/early 2000s when everyone was depressed because of 9/11. It’s been nearly a quarter of a century, Philly. Bring back the Kelly green!

30. New England Patriots

Post Tom Brady, the Patriots have made improvements. I’ll admit, they have some good alternatives. But it’s still not enough. The biggest problem is the helmet, specifically the logo on the helmet. The internet has been quite vocal lately about the superiority of Pat Patriot over the current logo and I’m inclined to agree with them. But to improve the helmet, I have a much simpler idea: ditch the grey and make it white.

29. Tennessee Titans

It’s 2025. Every year there’s at least one team that everyone agrees to collectively shit on. This year it’s the Titans. Not only are they a poorly ran organization, their uniforms kinda suck too. Complexity is out. Simplicity is in. And the Titans uniform is a bit too complex for my tastes. Simply ditch the sword theme and get rid of the grey altogether. And as much as I love the old Houston Oilers uniforms, it’s time to retire those. Those belong to the city of Houston. If they wanted to keep those then the Adams family should have never of changed the name to “Titans”. Does the name “Oiler” make any sense for Tennessee? No. But who gives a shit? So actually my advice to improve the uniform is to change the name back to “Oilers”. That might solve a lot of Tennessee’s problems.

Vertical limit

“A man’s got to know his limitations,” Clint Eastwood famously said in Magnum Force.

I don’t know who wrote that line. But I like to think it was Michael Cimino, a man who would eventually fly too close to the sun and crash and burn an entire movie studio (The line was probably written by John Milius though). But in my mind, the greatest testament to man’s hubris is mountaineering the Himalayas. Some things just go against the laws of god and mankind was never supposed to exist above 26,000 feet. Not even goddamn airplanes.

They say mountaineering is a sport. But it’s a rich man’s sport. Conquering things that are actively trying to kill you is no normal hobby. It’s absurd when you think about it; ancient rocks that have stood for millions of years and have become cultural icons and sites of holy pilgrimage get defaced and carved up for a thrill. Trash and dead bodies litter their summits. And all for what? So you can say you’ve been to the top?

What’s been done to Mt. Everest is a travesty. In time, I’m sure K2, Annapurna, Kangchenjunga, and others will face a similar fate. If you want to risk life and limb to get high, I have great news for you: there’s crack cocaine. It’s much cheaper and much safer. But more importantly, you’re not trashing one of nature’s wonders.

In the struggle of man versus nature, nature is at an unfair advantage. So show some goddamn respect. A man has got to know his limitations.

da bears

Jay Cutler is a man I think about almost daily. Never met him. But I’m sure he’s an asshole. I personally would never have sex with Tomi Lahren but I can appreciate that level of self-loathing. But Cutler’s lasting legacy is not throwing tight spirals or failing to live up to his potential; it’s becoming the avatar for general misanthropy. I’ve always wondered how someone like him occupies their time in retirement (other than wracking up numerous DUIs of course). Cutler is definitely a guy who wears cargo shorts and flip flops year around. I imagine he also drives a jacked up white Ford F350 with tinted windows and LED lights. He also goes to the local rivers and lakes to fish. Not because he enjoys it. But because it gives him plenty of time to sit under the sun and hold his nickel plated 9mm and ask himself “is today the day?”.

Salute

Welcome to my cock

Here’s the deal. I don’t think the 1996 Michael Bay classic The Rock is a James Bond movie. It’s well established that all the James Bonds, from Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan, are the same character. But something about this theory appeals to me. Connery’s portrayal of 007 felt distant. Impenetrable. It’s interesting to consider his segment of the franchise as something different from the whole. But if the Rock is, in fact, a James Bond movie, we get to see another angle of the 007 universe, chiefly the political fallout. Until Craig, Bond didn’t give two shits about the real world consequences of his clandestine activities. But under Connery, he stopped WWIII and nuclear war several times. Wouldn’t you think that might have caused a stir in Washington, Moscow, and other centers of world politics? So The Rock, if one wishes to include it in their head cannon, greatly expands the mythology of the Connery Bond tenure.

But what’s also cool about the video above is that this guy goes into some minute detail. Like, he REALLY maps out a timeline. I mean, people call me a dork. But GODDAMN. But the best part of his reconstruction is that the only reason why Bond ended up in Alcatraz is due to the ending of Dr. No when he disconnects his boat from the US Marines to shag Honey Rider. Apparently that was a bad decision which led to an erroneous capture, followed by a tenure in federal prison. Honestly, that was the most realistic part of his explanation.

Cock n bull

You know what a great scene in a movie is? It’s that opening ski sequence in A View to a Kill. A lot of people hate that movie. They say “Roger Moore is too old to play James Bond”. Or “all the characters act really stupid. Or “it’s a rehashed plot from Goldfinger”. And it’s all true. But goddamn, that cold open was lowkey pretty badass. Say what you want about John Glen’s tenure as director throughout the 80s, but the man could direct the hell out of a pre title sequence. For Your Eyes Only notwithstanding, all the cold opens in the 1980s were dope as hell. I’m not saying that AVTAK’s opening was better than The Living Daylights, but I will say that the skiing is probably the most intense in any James Bond movie. Think about it dawg: it’s got helicopters flying overhead, Bond jumping down crevasses and skiing down sides of ice cliffs, snowboarding, you name it. And they show it all in six minutes or less. What ruins it for most is the Beach Boys playing over the snowboarding, but that’s just Glen’s directing style. He was known for ruining intense action sequences by cutting to someone’s stupid face, or in this case, playing an ill timed song. It doesn’t take away from the fact that it was incredible footage. So yeah, come to find out that A View to a Kill is good folks 🤷‍♂️

A shart too far (part II)

I think my favorite type of guy is the guy who will shit in every toilet he sees. Like, I worked with a guy who would blow up the break room toilet where dozens of coworkers, both male and female, would congregate and then he’d walk out and the stench of raunch shit would blanket the break area and the dude would act like it was nothing. And when I was in the Army, there was a tool crib/warehouse-like area that had an open air bathroom attached to it, and this mother fucker would go in there and blast his asshole every morning for the whole warehouse to hear. There seems to be an unspoken rule about certain toilets at the workplace, like some toilets are meant for pissing only. No matter. If a toilet can handle shit, someone will inevitably shit in it. It’s a hardwired rule of the universe, much like Newton’s laws of thermodynamics.

Shit loudly. Shit proudly