Revolting

A Little Love and a Little Encouragement. Adulthood is a scam. You think, “Oh, I can vote and drink a beer,” but those minor luxuries come with a lifetime of work and the sorts of responsibilities and challenging relationships that wear a body down. We all have coping mechanisms. We’re not all soft little kittens. […]

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted. Humans need downtime, time when they don’t need to respond to emails or perform labors or be responsible for stuff generally, time away from the great grinding wheel of late stage capitalism, the non-stop kabuki theater of politics, and the soul-muting effect of the daily ritual. Americans don’t get or […]

The Law of the Conservation of Irritation. In the appendix to Einstein’s paradigm-shifting 1905 treatise on special relativity, he mentions this little known law that states: Your level of irritation may vary within a given range, described by an infinite sine wave, but basically it always stays the same. Even if nothing much is going […]

Remote Control. This episode of Revolting is completely dedicated to a show-by-show analysis of the late ‘80s MTV game show Remote Control with Ken Ober and Kari Wuhrer. Just kidding. What it’s actually about is the time we all spend, while not at work or getting paid, thinking about work, and how sitting and thinking […]

The Looking Glass Self. In 1902 Charles Horton Cooley came up with this idea that our sense of self is formed in this sort of ricocheting set of judgments. Basically, you aren’t who YOU think you are, and you aren’t who other people think you are; you’re who you think other people think you are. […]

A Partial List of Things We’re Against. There’s a subtle difference between being anti-establishment and anti-authority, but we’re both. Also, anti-boredom. Anti-fascist. Yes. Obviously.  We’re against greed and avarice, whatever that is. We’re against eggplant and zucchini, unless they’re fried. We’re against work and wage slavery, human trafficking, racism, sexism, size-ism, transphobia, homophobia and Strava. […]

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Writer. Humans are social animals. We only make sense to ourselves in a larger context, and we spend the years of our lives trying to surround ourselves with good or interesting people, sometimes both. But the world is large and diffuse. The best people are scattered to the wind, like […]

The View from the Top of the Creative High Dive. Even if you’ve been doing your thing for a good long time, you have these moments where you wonder if you can pull it off again. Like you start a story or a painting with a bright and crystal clear idea, and in the back […]

Beyond Cracked. Even the most unserious athlete occasionally overdoes it. If you’re like us, then sometimes you even overdo overdoing it. Maybe you’ve been there, dead in the saddle, dehydrated, cramped, contemplating your imminent death, praying for it even. And then you drink a full gas coke and feel much better. Music pick of the […]

Everything Louder Than Everything Else. Everything and everyone is competing for your attention. What most people don’t realize is that they’re ALSO competing for their own attention. What are we losing? How are we fighting back? Or are we all just blithely accepting that our minds are no longer our own? Music pick of the […]