Walden Ponderer

I've read stories sprinkled with quotes from his friends, who are too polite to say "bug fucking batshit crazy" but it's clear from context he's gone around the bend. Dude really believes this shit, but if you sat him down and played reruns of George Noory, he would believe things that are even more disconnected from the universe the rest of us live in.

I've said howdy my whole life. Lots of folk here in Carolina say it. I've even heard it in DC. The only place I've ever said it and have folk look at me funny was Maine. And they're barely civilized anyway.

The level of psychosis necessary at this point to sustain faith in this ridiculousness would ordinarily render the subject incapable of functioning with respect to daily tasks. I'm impressed he still knows where his own front door is.

Take comfort in the fact that the Ogallala aquifer is about to dry up, and when it does, it will also be a hellscape of drought, lost topsoils, famine, blistering heat, disease, migration induced poverty, and lack of access to basic services.

I s'pose I should have been clearer. 1488 is a widespread slogan. I was just pondering all the things other than email addresses and Twitter handles that make use of it. I could easily picture rural Michigan, for example, being home to the 1488 Saloon and Gun Range.

For what it's worth, FM 1488 runs through Magnolia. Seems a little too on the nose to me, but you never know.

First draft is written in crayon in a Big Chief tablet.

Trust me, with that couple, there was never any more to the story. Even for Stephenville, they are boring as fuck. No, the women from that side of the family are all just OCD as hell.

Kinda interesting extended family story I only found out about today. Wife's family are your prototypical West Texas nutjobs. Anti-vaxx churches, gun collections that strain even an orthodontist's budget, the whole conspiracy-addled nine yards. This past summer, one of my wife's aunts died of covid -- no real surprise there. We did not attend the funeral, because it was going to be a church full of unvaxxed and unmasked. We did watch a YouTube feed, and sure enough, shoulder to shoulder and as unhygienic as a septic tank. We figured news would trickle out of numerous cases from this superspreader event par excellance, and sure enough we heard of a few more deaths. We didn't hear, though, until today of the saga of one of my wife's older aunts and her husband. Both came up positive, both ended up in the hospital. She got out after a few weeks, but her husband got put on the ventilator, and after a couple of weeks there, the doctor told the aunt her husband wasn't going to make it. She bagged up all his clothes, gave away all his guns, threw out a lot of his memorabilia, and started getting ready for his funeral. A week later, he made a miraculous turnaround, and got off the vent. Another week, and he was sent home, permanently in a wheelchair, permanently on oxygen. And without any stuff.