This Week's Writing 1/25/25

It's a week where we need all the cats.

The cats do the best they can, but this has been a pretty horrible week. Here’s what I published.

Politics

The workplace teaches Americans to embrace authoritarianism—with Ilana Gershon. (Newlines)

Trump’s honeymoon won’t last. (Public Notice))

Is Elon Musk an asshole or a Nazi? (EIH)

Pritzker and Budde need your support. (EIH)

Cultural Criticism

Every David Lynch movie, ranked. (EIH)

Jeff Vandermeer’s Absolution is a prequel intended to confuse. (New Humanist)

Countee Cullen and Uncle Jim wrestle with racism in the Harlem Renaissance. (EIH)

Severance Season 2 is decent, but not quite up to season 1. (Chicago Reader)

Cash for Gold is a small film that shouldn’t feel brave, but right now it does. (Chicago Reader)

20 Books that influenced me. (EIH)

Poetry

Little garbled cry of horror. (dadakuku)

Home
ladnede fdo heat erf
ndae omht oefas ethe weak

Less garbled cry of horror. (Five Fleas)

If I had a time machine
I would go back
and helplessly change nothing.
I would have no power to change anything.
But at least they would not have happened
all the things we knew would happen
and could not stop.

Dog poem. (Five Fleas)

Bedtime
You are a good dog.
You are a diagonal dog.
Please move over.