Category: The Bonzo Diaries
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Nashville
A Note On My Return They let me back into Nashville last Tuesday, which felt appropriate. Tuesday is the day of the week that has given up trying to be anything in particular—not the fresh start of Monday, not the momentum of Wednesday, not the desperate optimism of Friday. Tuesday is a day that has…
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Journey to the Center of the Blockchain
I went to the blockchain because my coins were screaming. Not metaphorically. I mean screaming. A high-pitched, margin-call shriek echoing through the fiber-optic desert like bats trapped in a Bloomberg terminal. You don’t ignore that kind of noise. You load up the laptop, spike the coffee with whatever’s left in the cabinet—two Modafinil, a microdose…
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The Director’s Cut
I went to the movies expecting escape. That was my first mistake. The ticket app said the film was playing at 7:40. It had been playing all week. People were dressed for it—like a minor holiday, a secret handshake. Leather jackets, ironic denim, that look of mutual recognition you get when strangers agree they’re here…
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The Phantom’s Revenge
ACT I: ARRIVAL & THE PERFORMANCE. They invited me to Santa Monica, to the clean, well-lighted prison of culture called The Broad Stage. The mission: to bear witness to a “subsidized art opera,” a thing of fair quality and certain protection. A fortress against the market. A mausoleum with a liquor license. I went armed…
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The Cognitive Manhattan Project and Its Coming Boardroom Coup
The air in Davos smells of melting permafrost and panic-sweat. Venture capitalists whisper about AGI alignment like medieval monks debating how many angels might pirouette on a data center’s cooling fin. Meanwhile, in a windowless Virginia sub-basement, a task force plots its leveraged buyout of one of those boutique model shops out near the crumbling…
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Big In a Texas
Once upon a time, being big in Japan meant you’d failed in America but succeeded in myth. These days, we’ve moved the mirage inland. Now it’s Texas — the South Capital of Soft Capital — where every hustler, coder, and half-famous band gathers to pretend they’re building something that matters. I wasn’t looking forward to…
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Revisiting Vietnam
Research Grant Proposal: Revisiting Vietnam: Exploring the Parapsychological Labyrinth of a Humphrey Triumph Over Nixon, Impeded by Kaleidoscopic Counterculture and Fellow Travelers in the Fog Authored by: Mortimer M. Muddle Sponsored by: Abstract: The specter of Vietnam looms large in the American psyche. This proposal seeks to revisit that pivotal moment in history, venturing into the…