Drew Magary - The End Specialist

Downtown DC around the Wizards’ arena is essentially a pedestrian thoroughfare now. I have no issue with this, since people in DC can’t drive for shit, except that Metro stops can be goddamn light years away from each other. That scene you described at Penn Station? That’s every Metro station, except here the station escalators never work, so you have to haul ass up four thousand stairs before you get to emerge above ground. And the buses aren’t running. All the protesters have been forced to demonstrate on the other side of the Potomac, along the bike trail in Arlington. I saw a bunch of them trying to swim across the Potomac to get to the Mall, only to have cops pick them up in a riverboat and haul their sorry asses out of the water. One of them almost drowned in the rip currents.

I have a friend who works on the Hill who says the Supreme Court judges will be moved to an undisclosed location to argue the California case. Lots of bomb threats.

Fucking crazy, man. Fucking crazy.

—MK

Date Modified: 7/18/2019, 11:07AM

A Blonde Everywhere I Turn

I was walking down Third Avenue today when I spotted a woman across the street with a remarkable body and blonde hair that broke just past her shoulder blades. I turned electric. I saw a gap in traffic and sprinted across the avenue. A cab rounding from Forty-third blithely took the corner and nearly plowed into me. I kept my focus on the blonde as the driver honked at me three hundred times in the space of four seconds. She didn’t turn her head and kept bouncing down Third, with me trailing behind her and trying to figure out a plan in my head before quickening my pace to identify her. I kept thirty yards behind, dodging dog walkers, tourists, and the meandering hordes of the unemployed. I took out my phone and queued up the number for the police without hitting Send, so I would have it at the ready. I took her picture so I could post it to my feed if need be. If this blonde was the blonde, I’d call the police and alert them to her presence, then follow her until they arrived to detain her.

I made the decision to pass. I sprint-walked closer and closer, until I was side-by-side, then I feigned interest in the window of a Hot & Crusty on the other side of her, and caught a quick glimpse on her face. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t even close.

This sort of wild-goose chase has now taken up firm residence in my daily routine. Spy blonde. Suspect blonde. Chase blonde. Realize I’ve misidentified blonde. Think of my friend bursting into flames sixteen days ago while I remained outside, like a dumb dog that no one bothered to train. Doomed to follow every pointless distraction that crosses my path.

Date Modified: 7/19/2019, 9:34PM

The Worst Since Kent State

From the Washington Post website:

DEVELOPING: FOUR DEAD IN CONCORD CURE PROTEST

By Luke Spiller and Candace English

CONCORD, NH (AP)—Four pro-cure demonstrators were shot dead today by National Guardsmen in the New Hampshire state capital of Concord after a massive protest turned into the most violent cure-related conflict since two students were shot dead in a Berlin riot three weeks ago.

After a widespread report was released yesterday accusing the United States military of offering the so-called cure for death to its own soldiers in exchange for extended pension benefits, protesters here in the Granite State marched on the Capitol. Many were incensed.

“They were trying to force their way inside the building. They wanted to take it over,” says lawyer Jim Watley, who works in the Capitol. “I don’t know what they would have done if they had gotten in, but that was their aim.”

A small group of National Guardsmen aimed with protecting the Capitol tried to keep protesters at bay with shields and threats of tear gas. But witnesses say a crazed protestor threw a lit Molotov cocktail at the guardsmen, which prompted two of them to open fire into the crowd, causing protesters to flee in mass panic. Four people are now confirmed dead. An unspecified number of people were injured, including Jackie Frost of Nashua, NH, who was shot in the leg.

“They were supposed to use rubber bullets!” she cried. “No one else was armed! Why didn’t they use rubber bullets?”

The number of people killed in today’s incident is equal to that of the number killed in the 1970 shootings at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.

Further details forthcoming.

I looked outside my window just now and saw a man running down the median of the avenue, screaming his head off as cars threatened to sideswipe him from both directions. He wasn’t saying anything. He was just unleashing the most primal noise he could possibly make. He was holding up a sign that said GIVE IT TO US NOW.

On the TV right now, they’re showing protesters lined up against the barricades in DC. They look like a mob of shoppers waiting to get into a department store at 7:00 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. The President is due to speak at 8:00 p.m.

Date Modified: 8/14/2019, 3:20PM

“One Infinite Generation”

Here’s the full text of the President’s speech, copied from CNN:

My fellow Americans:

This is a very tense time. The world has been confronted with a medical innovation that represents a seismic change in the very nature of who we are and how we interact. I am not an enemy of science, nor do I ever wish to be someone who stands in the way of progress. Three years ago, when I first issued the executive order banning the black market sale of the cure for aging, it was never with the intention that the ban would be permanent. Like many of you, I marvel at possibility opened by this cure. It means the potential to have a very long, very wonderful life, surrounded by those we love for perhaps thousands of years or more.

But we must consider the impact that kind of longevity will have, both on our fellow men and women and on the large yet delicate planet we call home. For the past 243 years, we have existed as a country united in a single goal: liberty for all. We believe in freedom because we believe it is not only the right of every man, woman, and child, but also because freedom serves as the catalyst for our very highest ambitions.

It is this idea—the idea that freedom can make the world a better place—upon which we have built our nation. It is this idea that so many brave young Americans have fought and died for. At Valley Forge. At Gettysburg. In Normandy and Iwo Jima. In Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our men and women fought not only for their fellow countrymen, but for future generations—generations they knew they’d never live to meet face-to-face.

But there aren’t going to be future generations anymore. Not after this. There will only be us. One infinite generation, forever growing and reaching an unknown and incomprehensible size. And so now we are charged once again with the task of sacrificing for the sake of our nation’s future—a future in which we will all now serve a much larger role than we ever dreamed possible. Because while we may now have a virtually unlimited lifespan, our natural resources almost certainly do not. Gas. Clean water. Land. Mother Nature has blessed us with only a finite amount of each of these things.

We have known, long before this cure was discovered, that we have been consuming resources at an unsustainable pace—a pace that will now quicken at an unimaginable rate. We are a nation of strong, hardworking people. But it is, I’m afraid, part of human nature that we adapt only when forced to. We are told there is only so much crude oil left in the earth. Yet we can still buy gas at the station on the corner, and for a relatively decent price. We haven’t changed our ways because we don’t feel we have to.

It is only in the face of grim reality that we are able to dig down and discover just what we are made of. And that reality is coming, hurtling towards us faster and faster every day now. I cannot tell you when it will come—perhaps long after I’ve left office. But it will come. And the question we must all ask ourselves is: Are we ready for that reality?