My New Book

Signed copies available, and there are plentitudes ready at the house of Jeff Bezos, my publisher.

Preface:

This morning I made the cold, snowy walk to the cardiolo-
gist because I like to spend several days before an appointment
readying my heart for the onslaught of bureaucracy. Exercise
helps. Respiration was 100, pulse 70, and blood pressure 115
over 73. I’m in A-fib constantly, and only visit the heart doctor
in order to get a blood thinner prescription refilled.
Jay the PA checked my vitals (repeating what the nurse had
recorded 10 minutes prior), and then proceeded to talk about
his life for the next 25 minutes. He has three kids in middle
and high school. The younger two play sports and instruments
in the school band. The oldest takes college classes training to
become a mechanical engineer. He was recently diagnosed with
Type I Diabetes, so he can’t choose the career he was hoping for,
which was joining the Navy to work on a nuclear submarine.
Jay is bummed too, but admits his son will probably land a job
with Lockheed Martin or Boeing, Inc. and be just as content
with annihilation work in the private sector. Right out of college
he’ll make around 80 grand a year. Jay drives a used GMC Sier-
ra 2500 four wheel drive, double cab pick up truck ($45,000) in
order to haul the 2021 36 foot Keystone Carbon Travel Trailer
RV ($50,000) for family camping trips. He commutes with the
GMC five days a week, and on weekends, carts his kids to in-
door track meets and band competitions all over the state. He’s
put 20,000 miles on the monster truck since February. His wife
purchased a 2025 Chevy Trailblazer SUV ($32,000) which, says
Jay, already has 15,000 miles tacked on the odometer.
I also learned what kind of cars Jay’s father and mother drive,
where they live, their shopping habits, the bare bones emergen-
cy medical facility in Tupper Lake, how he spent his Thanksgiv-
ing, the nine instruments his middle child plays, not including
percussion! All this information and more pressed into my
brain before sunrise. Before coffee!
I should mention that I also decided to walk to his office in
the snow and ice because I am in the final days of a year long
project to keep expenses below the poverty line. I didn’t want to
mark another $21 for car use, which is my local round trip fee
to “borrow” my wife’s car, the comparable cost for cab fare in
Oswego. That would bring me too far “in the red” to begin the
week, especially since I still had to use the car for grocery shop-
ping, which has been standard since the project began. A brisk
walk in the cold would get my heart pumping and save money
to keep me from paying taxes to a genocidal bureaucracy.
Jay is a very nice and hopefully competent PA. I would
strongly recommend him. He says I don’t need to have heart
work done, which means no invasive ablasion, nuclear stress
test, or a chip implanted in my left atrial appendage. And
thankfully, no more drugs! Just let the A-fib be as long as it
doesn’t wake me up in the night with palpitating terror, while
I continue to take my blood thinner. Jay is a husband, father,
part-provider, consumer and enabler of oligarchy and pretend
capitalism—a gem of an American, and as normal and “good”
as they come. With a pinpoint lobotomy, I bet we could become
fast friends. My lobotomy, not his, for I am the anomaly. I am
the the kink, the peculiarity, that patch of unwanted ice his mu-
sical genius kid slips on and breaks his wrist—another bit of in-
formation he shared without my asking. (Jay gets $80/hr. to wax
poetic about heart and circulation, though for the majority of
our visit he talked about his recent purchases and family drama.
So, after a half hour, I paid roughly $35 to hear his story, which
I guess is what people addicted to bureaucracy are expected to
pay to get their three month’s supply of stroke-preventing pills
to pop.)
I always keep an eye out for kindred spirits in dystopia,
though I admit it’s like hunting for truffles in a Walmart park-
ing lot. At first blush, Jay seemed to possess all the right qual-
ities for a burgeoning friendship. A gentle person, attentive,
inquisitive… That is, until he began to talk about his superficial
life, which proved there won’t be any dreams of revolution play-
ing out in Jay’s mind, which is alread made up for him. GMC
Sierra, Keystone Carbon Travel Trailer, a fervent Democrat or
Republican, and genius nuclear engineer spawn cruising the At-
lantic ready to annihilate all of his father’s best camping spots.
Jay encourages his boy to tinker with nuclear weapons. Just like
any lunatic would in a world gone politely insane. Jay’s truck
gets 11 miles to the gallon while hauling a three ton plastic
camper all over hell to high school indoor track meets. Jay will
never understand why a man like me wants to live below the
poverty line and encourage braver souls to hunt the billionaires.
Unfortunately, Jay and his kids are my enemies. But they’re soft
ones. Dumb ones. Jay does not suffer irony about his world,
therefore Jay is free in his own mind, and that will get him
very close to death clean and guilt-free. Sure, there will come a
reckoning, but it’s always too late for Americans to become any
lasting good.
People like me are the worst. We just aren’t satisfied with
everything at our fingertips. Skeletons at the banquet. Consum-
mate squids ruining a mediocre time. Some of us seem crazy.
Like me. I dive shirt and shoes into a baby pool at an adult
birthday party. I do it sober, and then I start drinking. Some of
us cannot see gray. We’re black and white, good and evil. If that
approach isn’t smarter, it is definitely quicker. I would be an
excellent Robespierre at any meeting of anxious minds. I began
this project with the help of a little lined journal my daughter
gifted me at Christmas. I titled it “Poor Ronnie’s Anti-Ethnic
Cleansing Almanac”. It contains very little “almanac” infor-
mation beyond my own careful expenditure accounting, no
tide tables or phases of the moon, although a full lunar eclipse
appeared in April and I probably ate a rice cake that dark day to
tide me over until dinner.
No, my almanac is more social commentary about anti-geno-
cide, which is the most tragic conjunction of all time, don’t you
think? What kind of sick gray-sighted person made that phrase
palatable to society? It’s very difficult to get past my lips even.
This year I heard it click off the tongues of presidential candi-
dates and repeatedly chime its dirge on the Doomsday Clock.
Since October 7, 2023, tens of thousands of children have been
murdered in Gaza by the international mafia of the United
States government, its shadow billionaires, and the tail-wagging
dog state of Israel. On January 1, 2024, I began my project to
stay below the poverty line to avoid paying income tax to the
killers. It is my solution to living sane among the terror insanity
of Jay the PA and his mass majority of American brothers and
sisters who are complicit in not only war crimes and genocide,
but also the likelihood of nuclear annihilation, which I believe
is the sole threat to all life beyond a permanent eclipse of the
sun or enormous asteroid impact. I would not be able to change
the path of such a hopelessly broken man, Jay, nor an entire
population, without the threat of stupid violence. For as long as
his truck gets gas and his kid blows the tuba, Jay is just one of
many millions wanting to be loved and appreciated by a system
offering little more than superficial trinkets atop landfills of
humiliation, degradation and inevitable annihilation. Jay rep-
resents the multitude of ignorances that bolster an evil empire,
and he gets along splendidly in his own mind. With only one
life to live, it might be impossible to usher in peaceful coexis-
tence before nuclear armageddon. Some of us crazy ones will
have to try. Hence this little book outlining a creative path to
poverty. One way to begin annihilating annihilation is to stop
funding it.