Category: The Occasional Eye-Roll
-
The Fingerprint on the Glass: Why I Fired the Algorithm
There’s a very specific kind of modern arrogance that convinces a guy running a neighborhood gathering space that having an algorithm design a poster is an act of sheer genius rather than a quiet admission that he is completely out of gas. When you spend your waking hours unjamming sixty-year-old steel pinsetters, counting beer cans…
-
A Poem About Needing a Typewriter to Write This Poem
the ink is ready in my headblack and thick and foulready to bite into cheap cotton paperready to make a racket at three in the morninglike hail hitting a tin roof i have the cadencethe rough edgesthe heavy sigh of a man who knowsthe rent is latethe world is hollowand the coffee is cold i…
-
The Rise of Slop Culture and the Defense of Human Sweat
Walk into any grocery store at two in the morning and take a slow stroll down the center aisles. What you are looking at isn’t really food. It’s miles of shelf-stable calories extruded through high-pressure industrial nozzles, chemically dyed to look appetizing and shrink-wrapped in slick plastic. It’s food stripped of dirt, season, weather and…
-
Today I Feel Like an ALMOST Broken Dryer
the belt is fraying around the drum,but the dial clicked forward anywayi know what i was built to dotake the soaked, heavy thingsand turn them light again so the motor groans awakethe metal rattles on the concrete floori go through the revolutionsspinning, tumbling,yet leaving everything damply dry the heat element gave up halfway throughleaving only…
-
The Grand illusion of our empty bucket
The ocean covers over seventy percent of our planet, yet we’ve explored a staggering, deeply impressive five percent of it. Maybe five. We’ve barely dipped our toes into our own terrestrial bathtub, yet we confidently stride around pretending we own the place, fully convinced we’ve mastered the depths because we managed to map a few…
-
That One Time a Fitness Influencer Made Me Think
Liam Layton recently asked how loud you think you can scream internally before it becomes external. It is a hauntingly precise way to measure the soul in 2026. Lately my internal acoustics have moved past a dull roar and into the kind of vibration that threatens to take the house down. It turns out that…
-
The Existential Weight of Pie Selection
G.K. Chesterton once wrote that “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” I find this quote mostly terrifying because if we allowed my ancestors to vote on our current dinner menu, we would all be eating hardtack and salted cod while dying…
-
The Absurd Theology of Kibble: Why One Woman’s Lawn is Better Than Congress
It appears I’ve just been introduced to a genuine superhero, though one who mercifully eschews the Spandex and capes in favor of, you know, actually doing something helpful. Vicky from Roxz’s Resources & Awareness – that’s a name that should be on a ridiculously expensive, limited-edition bobblehead. The sheer audacity of her volunteering her time…
-
The Pulpit of the Podcaster: Where Modern Sermons Get Downloaded
The modern pulpit it seems has gone mobile. It’s no longer confined to the hallowed halls of brick and mortar but has been downloaded streamed and whispered directly into the ears of a global congregation. The modern-day prophet is no longer robed and standing behind a finely carved lectern but is probably wearing a hoodie…
-
Miracles of the Mundane: Finding Awe in the Everyday Absurdity
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time spent in the trenches of human experience, it’s that we’ve been utterly and completely lied to about miracles. They aren’t the dramatic, parted-seas, water-into-wine kind of events we’ve been sold on since we were children. Those are just cosmic parlor tricks, the sort of flashy spectacle…
JUSTIN LOCKRIDGE 