But I didn’t just want to grift of the popularity of the subject. I wanted an actual problem to investigate, something I could really dig my teeth into. After a deal of searching, I finally found it.

Traverse City Michigan is a fascinating city. It’s absolutely tiny compared to most towns in the U.S., but it has some deep connections.

It’s full of second homes and vacation stays for the rich and powerful across the Midwest. Pete Budigeg is planning to retire there. Micheal Moore sponsored a film festival there. It’s got some of the fanciest houses and nicest restaurants in the area.

The point I’m trying to make is that it isn’t some crime ridden ghetto. And yet it is chock full of Flock Cameras. In fact, it’s the most surveilled city in all of Northern Michigan. I don’t support Flock in any terms, but I can see a politician making the argument that Flock will reduce crime in high crime areas.

That’s not Traverse City. It’s as safe as any city in America can be. So why are they putting up surveillance cameras? Is this really about keeping the city safe, or is something more going on? My goal is to find out!

If that sounds interesting, then subscribe to keep following my work. And if you have any tips or ideas, please let me know!

Thank you and God Bless

Hemlock Hobo

It was only after my week without screentime, overlooking the dark star-studded canvas that is America at night that I remembered

“Oh yeah, aren’t we at war with Iran?”

I literally forgot that we had been pounding Iran with missiles for a week. The thought just didn’t occur to me. Even better, when I did remember, I just didn’t care. I looked out at the horizon and waited for the mushroom clouds to form. When they didn’t, I realized it wasn’t really my problem.

I just got back from a mission trip to rural Honduras. We raised money for a clean water project, led worship services, gave out bibles, and did house visits. As part of the project, we had to give up all screen time during the trip. No phones, no computers, no reels, nothing.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but it was the longest I’ve been without looking at a screen in maybe 8 years. Just writing that out loud hurts to think about, but it’s true. I am always using a screen of some kind. If I’m not on my phone, then I’m doing schoolwork on my computer. Heck, I just got a job creating content. Friends come over and we play Mario Kart or Cod. Screen usage is just so ingrained in life today that if you aren’t actively avoiding it, its usage becomes impossible.

I was worried about not being able to go without my phone. I’m so used to screens and music and noise that just the thought of a week without them had me nervous, not specifically because of the lack of screens, but because I didn’t know how I was going to react. I guess I was expecting withdrawal or something.

I just need to scroll for a minute sir, please, just one reel, just 30 seconds on Tiktok to keep me going.

And then the craziest thing happened.

I had the best week of my life.

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I was sleeping on a concrete floor, we had 3 hours of electricity, we couldn’t eat half of the food and any of the water for fear of food poisoning, our showers were frigid, we were travelling through a country that the State Department generally regards as a hellhole, and I was having the best time of my life.

For once, I wasn’t obsessed with the news. War in Ukraine? Who cares. Trump tweeted something? Not my problem. I literally did not care about anything not happening in the village I was in. You might call that ignorance; I call it bliss.

It made me realize that knowing about the problems of the world is not a blessing. It causes us to overestimate our worth. We focus on fixing things a million miles away that we can’t change, while ignoring the problems around us that we can do something about. I didn’t waste time on Instagram reels or YouTube. I read 1,500 pages of four different books, including one in Spanish. I practiced my Korean. I read my bible every day. I prayed every day. I translated hours upon hours, facilitated communication between my friends and Honduran farmers, fishermen, miners, teenagers, kids, and old women. My brain was working 10 times harder than it had in literal years (mind you I’m a college student) and I still felt more refreshed and fulfilled than normal. The biggest problem with technology for me is that it’s forced. I feel like a heroin addict that is told to get clean, while at the same time is told he needs to shoot up a little bit every day for work. How do you think that’ll go for him?

Then I got back home. I walked into my dorm, sat down at my desk, and hopped online. Slowly I felt the dopamine receptors in my brain flick back on, one by one. The information overload became an overdose, and immediately I was hooked again. It was literally too much information for my brain to handle. I felt like I had been plugged into the matrix, ones and zeroes zipping around my head like fat flies in the summer heat.

The internet is like the One Ring. You can learn anything you ever wanted to know. Bulgarian? There’s a course for it. 6^th century Sumerian whaling practices? Of course, here’s a pdf on the subject. Goat yoga? There are 20 influencers who will teach you everything you want to know. But every time you use it, it takes a little bit from you. You become weaker, more distracted, less powerful. It tears a tiny bit of your soul from you when you use it.

If I learned anything, it’s that the internet can be an extraordinarily edifying tool, but it can also be extremely destructive. Forcing yourself to take a break can help you discern whether you own the computer or if it owns you.

Until next time my friends.

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee at this link below. Yes, I am shamelessly begging for internet money. Don’t feel any pressure to give it to me. I’m just happy you made it this far.

buymeacoffee.com/Hemlockhobo

I could not image being your average uninformed normal person these days. Us conspiracy theorists have been talking about elites eating kids and harvesting adrenochrome from babies for yes. All the normies are figuring it out in real time from freaking Fox News and Twitter. Watching white liberals from New York and California have frank discussions about pizza gate and human jerky was not on my 2026 bingo card, that’s for sure. Our nation really owes a frank apology to Alex Jones, gas station crackheads, Qanon, and (this one hurts to say) 4chan, because they were the only ones who saw it coming. I mean, I’ve been talking about pedophile parties and Hollywood child sacrifices for a while, but even I never thought they were talking about it to each other on GMAIL!

Now that the dust has settled, and it has become clear that our government is really just a cabal of wealthy power players that have no sense of morals, people want to know what’s next. They demand trails and guillotines and mass executions. They’re screaming for Nuremburg trails like its 1945 again! I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s not going to happen.

We’ve known about Epstein for years, and nothing has come of it. Epstein died in prison, either via suicide or hired assassin. Ghislaine is chilling in a cushy prison, hanging out with her new friends and waiting for her release date. The SITTING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WENT TO THE ISLAND, AND HE’S STILL PRESIDENT. Both Benjamin Netanyahu and his predecessor were on a first name basis with Epstein. Bill Gates treated Jeff like his personal pimp and pharmacist, and no one’s throwing him in jail. Prince Andrew finally got arrested, but only years after the public learned of island adventure. The sad truth is that nothing is going to happen to any of these freaks. Not a single thing. They are still in power. They still rule the world. Heck, we don’t even know everyone who was connected to Epstein, because our own government redacted their names and hid their identities. They were eating “jerky” and “grape soda” and “pizza” and “muffins” and they are going to keep on doing it. I guarantee that the same thing that happened on the island 4 years ago is happening right now, as I write this, in Sheik’s basements and secret clubs and remote islands all around the world. This is still happening and it is going to keep on happening! I want to reiterate what I just said because I think it’s really important that we all understand this. They are still eating kids, and raping teens, and nothing, let me say it again nothing is going to stop them. It could be the Jews, or the Illuminati, or the lizard people, it doesn’t matter because they got away with it! They released the files because they wanted to brag, because they wanted to show off. They are proud of what they did!

The truth is, we’ve lost the will to do anything about it. The Western World is fundamentally a safe one, and while that has a lot of advantages, it comes with a cost. We are told not to fight in school, even to stop a bully or defend ourselves. We get distracted by weed and video games. We are told that success comes to those that wait. Our society doesn’t encourage risk. If you aim to be successful, you go to school, get a job, and wait 20 years. Money, safety, stability, security; You can have all those things, but only after you’ve waited a good while. We even imprison or threaten to imprison people for not letting themselves get attacked by criminals. Ask any gunowner; They know that if they ever have to actually use their guns in self-defense they can expect a length court trial to determine if the shooting was justified, no matter how blatantly obvious it was.

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All of this works great until the time comes for real action. When we need to throw some people in jail, to get out and show the government that no, we are not going to let you protect pedophiles from prosecution, we falter. We just don’t have it in us anymore. We worry about our permanent records, or what will happen if we speak out, and what our friends will think. The few people who would speak out are convinced no one else cares, and so they too are compelled into silence. The only people are capable of is blasé ineffectual complaining on the internet.

If they’ve been eating people, what else is true? The foods probably poisoned. Fluoride probably causes cancer. They literally have been turning chemicals in the water turning the freaking frogs gay. Pizza gate is back in play. After this revelation, everything is possible. If you want to be free from these people, if you don’t want to eat bugs and live in a pod, if you want to be happy and own something, you need to be creating your own elite. Not an elite of malice and evil, not an elite that meets in shadowy boardrooms and the Halls of Congress, but an elite of good, god fearing people that believe in truth, mercy, kindness, love, and caring for others, an elite that meets at friends’ houses for coffee, an elite that takes time out of their day for others; In short an elite that doesn’t really see themselves as an elite at all. That would be a step in the right direction. At the very least it would be action, something we are in very short supply of these days.

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee at this link below. Yes, I am shamelessly begging for internet money. Don’t feel any pressure to give it to me. I’m just happy you made it this far.

buymeacoffee.com/Hemlockhobo

Since then, I have been hopelessly addicted to mushroom hunting. And yet as addicted as I, lots of people tell me that mushroom hunting is “weird”. I tell people I forage mushrooms and they immediately think I’m some sort of hippie communing with crazy gods, high of my ass on a random Thursday. Or they think that I’m going to poison myself and my family with disgusting dirt covered toadstools. Mushroom hate is a uniquely American predisposition that I really don’t have any good explanation for. I can’t even begin to describe how much the rest of the world loves mushrooms. The Chinese go crazy for them. The Japanese love them. Russians will die for pickled mushrooms. Italians have built entire industries around mushroom harvesting. And yet us Americans still are incredibly mycophobic. While that attitude is changing, mushroom hunting is still relegated to third wheel among the other outdoor pursuits, hunting and fishing.

I can’t help but feel bad for the mushroom haters of America because they are missing out. Not only do mushrooms taste great, but they have untold medicinal benefits that scientists are just now coming to understand. Mushroom hunting gets you outside and in touch with nature in a profound way. Russians have called it “quiet hunting” and I think that’s the perfect way to describe it. You get to go on a treasure hunt in the woods and learn about nature in the process. Learning about mushrooms quickly becomes a gateway drug to learning more about the natural environment. In addition to learning about mushrooms, you learn about trees, plants, frost lines, micro climates, and so many other little bits of knowledge that soon you find yourself much more attuned to nature just because you wanted to eat some fungi. This connection to nature grows stronger as you spend more and more time in the woods.

I would also be remise if I didn’t mention the coolest mycology fact of all; it’s a totally open field. If you want, you can probably discover a new mushroom species in your own state! There is so little funding for mycologists that backyard experts and civilian scientists are allowed and even encouraged to contribute to it in a way that other subjects just aren’t. The culture in mycology circles encourages this discovery in ways I just haven’t seen in the rest of the scientific world. Get out there and make a discovery!

Ok, maybe I’ve convinced you to get into mycology. But where do you start? Mushroom identification can feel so overwhelming that many beginners give up out of sheer confusion. Most mycology sources will tell you to start by taking a class or talking with an expert. That’s a great idea, but I never loved that advice because it’s out of reach for so many people. I couldn’t afford to take a class, and I didn’t know any experts. The only people in my life who knew I was interested in mycology thought I was going to kill myself. The only option I had was self-study. If you have the money for classes, or if you know someone who has been foraging for years, please please please start there. One good class can be better than 10 hours of self-study.

But if you don’t have any other options, you can copy what I did. To start, I used the internet. A lot of foragers just rolled their eyes when I said that, and there’s good reason for that. Learning about mushrooms online is a controversial subject, one made more controversial by the recent use of AI. People have been publishing AI books and videos supposedly teaching you how to pick mushrooms. The problem is that Chat GPT cannot successfully differentiate mushrooms, it just thinks it can. Just as an experiment, I threw a couple of images of mushrooms in Chat GPT to test its skills, and it got 2/3 right. So it will only kill you 33 percent of the time (ha-ha)! Also, if you google a mushroom species for a reference nowadays AI images will pop up. It would be easy for a novice to confuse an AI photo with genuine photo and poison themselves by mistake.

There are genuinely good sources of information online, the key is to use discernment. Try looking for a mycological society in your area. They often have online identification guides that can be really useful. The group I’m certified by is Mami, or the Midwest American Mycological Information website. They have a whole study guide for their licensing program that has great information, albeit a little academic. No matter where you live, there is a group for you. Another place to try is outdoor websites like Outdoor Life or MeatEater, which have guides on foraging for mushrooms.

YouTube videos can also be good if you use the same discernment you use with websites. A distinct benefit of YouTube is the ability to see the mushrooms. Reading a book is great, and photos can do a lot, but seeing a video of a mushroom gives you a more complete idea of what it looks like in its natural environment. Look around for well researched videos, and use them as a general guide and reference, not as an end all be all.

The other key resource is books. Again, you have to be careful to avoid AI generated books. Make sure the authors are well known in the field, have some sort of credentials, and don’t use any Ai covers. At this point I think it would also be wise to avoid any book written in the last 5 years, just to be extra sure that the information is not AI generated. I would buy 2 books. You want a more comprehensive guide you can keep at home, and a sturdier, smaller field guide you can take with you outdoors. It is so nice to have reference pictures available with you in the field so you can double check. I take an Id guide with me every time I forage and never rely on just memory even though I am licensed as a Mushroom Expert in the state of Michigan, because why take the risk when you can have identification information at your fingertips?

I’d like to take a moment to highlight some dangerous mistakes people make when mushroom foraging and why they are so dangerous. There are four kinds of people I would consider high risk for serious mushroom poisoning. While I wouldn’t call this list entirely comprehensive, and mistakes obviously do happen, I am much more worried about mushroom poisoning from people in these four distinct groups. Anyone can get a tummy ache from foraging, but these people are at a higher risk for mushroom related deaths. I include this list so that you can understand where the most dangerous mycological mistakes happen and how you can avoid them.

1. Immigrants

Immigrants are extremely high risk for mushroom related deaths. The reason they are much more likely to die is because many immigrants grow up foraging, and assume that the same mushrooms they foraged back home will be safe in the U.S, which is not always the case Each place has a distinct mushroom context or set of species that are commonly eaten and their poisonous look alike. A great example of this is the paddy straw mushroom. This edible mushroom is extensively cultivated in southeast Asia and is considered a very desirable edible. It also looks a lot like a death cap mushroom. Death cap mushrooms contain amatoxins, one of the scariest toxins known to man. While I don’t understand all the chemistry behind it, the best way to describe it is that if you consume amatoxins and you don’t get treated, your liver liquifies. Not good! American and European forages know to avoid anything that looks like the death cap and have several ways to identify this horrific mushroom. But immigrants from other parts of the world don’t even know they should be worried about it. I recently read the story of a Mixtec couple living in Oakland who just assumed the mushroom was safe to eat because they ate something like it back home in Oaxaca. By the grace of God they survived, but many are not that lucky. 4 people this year alone have died in California from death cap mushrooms, and most if not all were immigrants. The lesson to take away this is that whenever you move or travel to a new location, assume you know nothing! Traveling from Wisconsin to Michigan is probably ok, but if you go to a new country throw out all your previous knowledge and take time to relearn. That humility will keep you alive.

2. Idiots

I don’t mean to be rude, but a lot of people who get sick from mushroom poisoning are not the brightest bulb in the box. They shove random mushrooms into their mouth, not even pretending to know what they’re doing, and are surprised to find themselves sick. The lesson here is pretty simple. DON’T EAT ANYTHING YOU HAVE NOT 100 PERCENT POSITIVELY ID’D. It is ok not to eat a mushroom you find. It is ok to just take photos. It is ok to just look at a cool mushroom. If you feel a little weird about eating a particular mushroom, don’t eat it. (As an aside, also take good photos of the mushrooms you eat. If you make a mistake and get sick, you’ll be able to learn from your mistakes and get an expert ID if necessary.

3. Toddlers

Toddlers like to graze. Unfortunately for them, lots of potentially harmful mushrooms can grow on suburban lawns within reach of toddlers. The lesson here is to take time to learn about common toxic species in your vicinity so that you can help others. Knowing what is actually dangerous can save lives, as the sooner you get someone medical attention after they eat a poisonous mushroom, the better their prognosis is.

4. Hippies

Look, the first thing everyone wants to know when I say I like mushrooms is “oooh, like magic mushrooms right” That’s not my scene. For a lot of people though, that’s why they got into mushrooms in the first place. I’m not here to condemn that. What I will say is that psychedelic mushrooms can be difficult to identify. Many of them are small brown mushrooms that look similar to potentially dangerous species. If you intend to harvest psychedelic mushrooms, take extra precautions and really make sure you know what you’re doing.

A lot more goes into ID’ing a mushroom than just looking at it. To properly Id a mushroom, you should use every sense you have and a few other characteristics. What does it smell like? Chanterelles smell fruity, like Wrigley’s gum, and oysters have a sort of…oystery smell. What does it feel like? Oysters are thick and meaty, while potentially dangerous angel wings are so thin you can almost see through them. What is it growing on? Chicken of the woods can grow on almost any tree, but COTW growing on eucalyptus give some people gastrointestinal problems. Chanterelles grow out of the ground, while look alike Jack O Lantern grows out of wood, including buried wood. What season is it? Morels usually sprout in spring, while Hen of the Woods flush in late fall. Are there bugs in it? Oyster mushrooms host a particular type of beetle that I’ve only ever seen eating large colonies of oyster mushrooms.

No one identification factor is conclusive. It’s the whole body of them that make up a successful identification. Don’t be afraid to use all of your senses! And if something doesn’t feel right, DON’T EAT IT. I’ve found mushrooms that I can successfully identify, but choose not to eat. Why? Because something about it felt off. Trust your inner gut, and don’t be afraid to leave the woods with just a picture. Mushrooms in the wild aren’t like the typecast you see in textbooks. Older and brand-new specimens can be especially hard to identify.

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I also wanted to include a note about spore prints. Mushrooms release spores. That’s the whole point of a mushroom, just as how the whole point of an apple is to spread apple seeds. Spores each have their own characteristics, and spores of different species look different. Many people use spores to identify mushrooms. For example, honey mushrooms, a common edible species, and deadly galerina species look similar. But galerinas have a rusty brown spore print. Mycologists look at spores by taking spore prints, usually by leaving mushrooms on a piece of paper or tin foil under a glass for a day to let the spores release. I personally do not take spore prints to identify species I intend to eat. My foraging philosophy dictates that if I don’t feel confident enough to forage a mushroom without a spore print, I shouldn’t be eating it. To put it another way, if taking a spore print is necessary to successfully id a mushroom, then I won’t eat it. Where I live, the choicest edibles (Morels, Chanterelles, Chicken of the Wood, Hen of the Wood, etc) can all be foraged without spore prints, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

This leads to the other main tenant of my foraging philosophy. Always ask yourself, what could go wrong? What I mean by that is that I always consider what will happen if I get my identification wrong. For example, if I mess up my chanterelle ID, then I probably ate a jack o lantern mushroom by mistake. I know that I may have a few days of food poisoning ahead, but I’m not going to die. Again, going back to the example above, I won’t forage honey mushrooms, because some of their look alikes are fatal if eaten. Now, I trust my foraging skills, but why would I ever want to take the risk? This rule has kept me alive and should be used especially by novice mushroom foragers. Take time learning the easiest and safest edible species first!

Once you harvest you fungi, there are two things to keep in mind. First, never serve mushrooms raw. All mushrooms need to be well cooked to make them safe to eat. Some heat liable toxins are neutralized this way. It also helps to break down chitin and structures that the human body finds hard to digest. This rule is far more important than people realize. I read about a case where a poor women was served undercooked or raw morel sushi in Montana and sadly died. 51 people were also sickened by the chef, who either didn’t know or didn’t care about this cardinal rule.

The second thing to keep in mind is that everyone has differences in how they metabolize and digest mushrooms. People can be allergic to specific species of mushrooms. The first time you try a new mushroom species, just eat a little bit! Don’t overdo it and give yourself a few days to make sure your body doesn’t have any problems with that specific mushroom! If you bring a mushroom dish to a group gathering, inform everyone who eats it that there are wild mushrooms in it before they eat it, and be especially cautious with the very young and very old!

Hopefully I’ve given you the tools you need to start learning about mycology! It is such a rewarding hobby, filled with some of the coolest people I have ever met. Mushroom nerds are the best!! Just remember to be careful, take your time learning, and always use your judgment when foraging!

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee at this link below. Yes, I am shamelessly begging for internet money. Don’t feel any pressure to give it to me. I’m just happy you made it this far.

buymeacoffee.com/Hemlockhobo

I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking for writing pitches, because I want to write more and I also want money, something that pitches occasionally offer. During this search process, I’ve seen many offers for writing residencies or writing retreats. They look so so cool! Unfortunately, they also are expensive. Like stupid expensive. I guess I didn’t realize that you have to pay for writing retreats, but apparently there is an industry out there preying on writers, and more likely people who want to pretend to be writers. I guess writing retreats were created for young Brooklynite trust funders and not regular people trying to learn how to write. As a young broke aspiring author, I cannot afford to pay 2000 dollars for a writing retreat in the Hamptons. But I still like the idea of going on a writing retreat. So, I decided to design a mini writing retreat of my own. My goal was to see how cheaply you could do a writing retreat and actually get stuff done. No frills, no luxuries, just pen to paper (or more accurately finger to keyboard) It turns out that if you are a tiny bit frugal you can have an awesome writing experience for almost no cost.

The first thing I did was look for a cheap place to stay. This can be customized for your budget, but for me, there were basically two options; camping or a motel. Motels have gotten shockingly expensive in recent years, so I opted to camp. This works much better in warmer climates, but if you have the gear you can even do a retreat in the dead of winter. The most important part of a planning a writing retreat, in my opinion, is picking a cheap location first. I would love to spend a month writing in a French vineyard overlooking the Alps, but until I win the lottery it just isn’t gonna happen. By choosing a location based on price first, you ensure your budget is kept low. I ended up choosing a campsite near Borrego Springs, because it was free, relatively warm, and close enough to home that I didn’t spend all day driving. I guarantee you that there is a semi cheap option within 2 hours of your house if you are willing to look for a bit.

The next thing you need to figure out is where you will actually write on your writing retreat. You might be thinking something along the lines of “Well Hemlock, I’ll just write in my room or tent.” Ok, cool idea. But you’ll want a coffee. Your chair will be too rough. The ground will be too hard. You’ll get cold. You’ll get hot. Pretty soon its 2pm and you are sipping on a Sprite or something in a second tier fast food restaurant, with not a single word having been written. In a lot of countries, cafes will let you stay there for as long as you want as long as you occasionally buy a coffee or snack. But in small town America, there aren’t a lot of chic European cafes at your disposal. That’s why I recommend public libraries. They have public wifi, are reasonably comfortable, and best of all you can stay as long as you want. If you can’t afford a hotel or Airbnb with wifi, this is your best choice. Of course, you don’t really need wifi to write, but a lot of writers consider it essential. The town I stayed at had a great public library, so I was all set.

In terms of other expenses, bring a cooler and buy food beforehand. I didn’t bring enough food, and I ended up having to go to a grocery store while I was there. It was delicious, but it did cost me more than I wanted. You aren’t there to eat; you are there to write!!! Pack as much as you can beforehand, not just food but clothes, caffeine, alcohol, ZYNS, whatever you need to stay locked in and in the zone. The goal is to bring enough food, drinks, and “stuff” that you feel comfortable, so you don’t have to spend time at stores when you could be doing something more valuable with your time, like, I don’t know, writing!

As I said above, people tend to think that writing is more about the vibes than actually getting anything done. A lot of “writers” I see online treat writing like gardening. They try to cultivate a writing “atmosphere” in the vain hope that like cultivating a garden by preparing the environment in a certain way writing will grow out of the dirt inside their mind with minimal effort. But anyone who has actually tried writing (or gardening) knows that it is not like that at all. When I write, it’s mostly a combination of furiously drinking coffee and starting at an empty screen, interspersed with brief bouts of actual good work. So if you are going to go to the effort and spend money going on a writing retreat, then make yourself a PLAN! Plan out what you are going to do and stick to the plan. If you want to write 10,000 words, then write an outline before you leave. If you want to edit, then decide ahead of time what you are going to edit and do your darndest to edit it all before you leave. Having a goal in mind anchors the whole trip and stops it from becoming a crappy vacation. Even if you don’t get anywhere near your goal, you’ll feel better because you worked towards it.

That’s basically all there is to it. My writing retreat was cheap, fun, and easy to plan, and you can do the same thing! Here is my most important piece of advice, which I saved for last so as to bless the readers who actually read my entire articles! You can write anywhere. You don’t need a mansion, or a computer, or a typewriter, or a chalet, or a cabin, or a nice pen, or literally anything. It is the only art that doesn’t require any expenses, so stop trying to make it something else!! Just have fun and write something that makes you happy!

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee at this link below. Yes, I am shamelessly begging for internet money. Don’t feel any pressure to give it to me. I’m just happy you made it this far.

https://buymeacoffee.com/hemlockhobo

This is Neo. He (It?) is a home help robot created by 1x technology, and you can preorder him today. He can do laundry, wash the dishes, get groceries, and everything else you could possibly want. How fun! Do you like neo? Do you want this in your home? Because I don’t. I don’t want this within 1000 fucking miles of my house, or my girlfriends house or my moms house, or anyone’s house that I don’t hate with a vehemence and passion that would make Pol Pot blush. I won’t even tell you why I hate it, because you should know. If you look at this thing, and you don’t immediately recognize the problem, then we are enemies. You are on a different side than me and I hope we never meet. Can you believe that a company would have the gall to sell a product like this? I would feel better about selling black tar heroin to 5-year-olds as a nutritional supplement. Congress should be demanding justice. Mobs should be calling for this company’s immediate foreclosure. Inquiries should be launched. Reports should dig into everything this company has ever done. People should be in shock, but instead no one cares. No one cares that we are being sold robots that look like something from a bad sci fi film, one that ends with the robots murdering everybody!

I’m mad, in case you couldn’t tell. I’m not really mad at Neo. He probably isn’t sentient. And if he is, then he is living in a hell he never wished for. I’m mad at the tech bros. I’m mad that there is a little CEO somewhere who thought “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could make a robot servant boy for rich idiots to fulfil their dreams of owning a child slave” I’m mad because anyone who can look me in the eyes and tell me that not only does America want Neo but America needs Neo is a psychotic lunatic who should be institutionalized. When you watch a video from this company, there’s a look in the founders’ eyes. It’s the look of a man who knows he is doing something wrong and is smiling because you don’t have the balls to call him out. A mischievous little twinkle that screams “Try and stop me!” It’s the same face I see whenever Tesla or Apple or Microsoft or Google announces a new product. I call it the Tech Bro Stare. The half smile, the dead eyes, the joy for a product that is so clearly wrong. Like, Cartel members are bad. But at the very least they know what they do is wrong. Pablo Escobar knew selling cocaine was not earning him a one-way ticket to heaven. He understood of some basic level the consequences of his actions. I cannot say the same of tech bros. They scare me because they genuinely believe that they are the good guys, holding the baton as they lead us all towards progress and inner peace.

You may think I’m crazy. “Ok Hemlock, it’s one unfortunate product.” Theres a lot of great things technology can do.” Like what? Sora just unleashed a product that allows you to make….brainrot. Oh good, more brainrot, we need that. How about the new AI that unblurs faces. I’m sure organized crime and child predators won’t hear about that. Speaking of child predators, now computers can make on demand child porn. Whoopee! Wanna watch a video of your crush and you having sex? It takes 5 minutes. Flock AI cameras can track you across a society, and anyone with 50 bucks can access the data, stalkers rejoice! ChatGPT is making kids kill themselves, stealing potential suicide victims from Instagram. AI tools are years away from making deadly new viruses. The next time Isis wants a bomb, all it has to do is ask AI for help. In fact, just about every terrorist, pervert, creep, murderer, gang, rapist, and criminal the world has gotten a leg up from the newest technology. Killer drones with bombs are flying around Ukraine and Syria, but don’t worry they’ll make it over here soon enough. How about AI for telling healthcare companies who should die and who should live. That seems practical! It’s a technological revolution, get excited!

I mean, do you even like any of this new tech? Personally, the last useful technology was probably Spotify, and that came out in 2006. Can you really tell me whether a digital fridge is necessary for your everyday existence? Even this new AI is useless. We have spent trillions of dollars on Ai, only to use it to make cheaper porn and broken conversation. What the fuck! I for one am sick of it. We all know it’s making everyone crazy, and yet no one wants to do anything about it. We sit at home and watch yet another dystopian technology is pumped out, and we all talk about how terrible it is but nobody does anything about it! If we don’t stand up for ourselves now, then we won’t get the chance.

I gave up my cellphone 3 months ago for a dumbphone, and it’s been really great. One thing that shocked me about it was directions. I had become so used to using Google Maps for directions, so when I finally had to look for the street signs myself instead of an app telling me to turn, I’m ashamed to say it took some getting used to. Then I got lost, and all of a sudden I was having to stop and ask people for directions like the 1980s! The craziest part was that they seemed so shocked by the whole thing, like they couldn’t believe that I would need to ask for directions. The point I’m making is that if we don’t start resisting this technology now, then we simply won’t be able to go back. Kids totally literally can’t read books, because they just aren’t exposed to them enough. We are at the precipice of a grand transformation. Your grandchildren won’t be able to look at you, because they’ll know that you could have stopped all of this. Instead, you didn’t do a damn thing. What a shame! So, if you are sick of this stuff, like me, then stand up and speak up. We need to let these people know that we don’t want the snake oil they’re selling. Don’t use ChatGPT! Don’t use AI! Write things by hand. Read books. Be vocal about it too. If you find people with a Neo in their house, or see someone using Ai, or at this point even if they have a Roomba, then let them know that what they are doing is wrong. Above all, shield your children from as much technology as possible. Protect them at all costs. Even if we can’t stop this, if we can give our kids a fighting chance, then everything will be all right.

P.S. If you liked this essay, then leave a comment down below and tell me what you think. Also, if you feel so inclined, you can support my work at the link below. No pressure though, I’m just grateful you read to the end!

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Humans in the woods have a ripple effect, much like a rock thrown into a pound. The bigger the splash, the longer the ripples last and the farther they go. The same can be said of humans. Tromp through the woods crunching every stick and kicking every rock, and it will take 30 minutes or more for your “wake” to subside. Sneak through the woods, as a hunter might, and after a few minutes the squirrels might even forget you were there. The key to moving slowly in the woods, from my experience, is to move 10 times slower than you think you need to. Walking at the correct stalking pace, a mile should take you an hour, minimum! If you don’t mess it up too badly, then slowly, and I mean really slow, they will pass the all clear signal among themselves via twitching tails, quivering paws, and cold black eyes. Once they know the threat has passed, the woods will start to awake from their temporary hibernation and fill with life once again.

Many believe that squirrels are an unworthy subject for any amount of written word to be spent on. Most people put them in the same category as rats, another much maligned creature. Anyone thinking this is probably thinking of city squirrels. If you have never spent time in the Northwoods of Michigan, the deep mountain crests and hollers of Appalachia, the lowlands of Arkansas, the pine forests of Maine, or any similarly wild locale, then I can’t blame you for holding prejudice against squirrels. But you must understand that woods born squirrels are not city squirrels. City squirrels, like city people, are uninteresting and have little to say. They are the denizens of college campuses and backyard lawns, fat little gnomes who sit and eat without saying a word, barely possessing the energy to run away as you approach. They know no danger except cats and barring an encounter with one they truly believe they own the entire city. City squirrels are lazy, pompous dicks that would as soon eat the brake lines in your car as they would chew on a walnut. Woods born squirrels, on the other hand, are noble and pious creatures, the kind that attend church on Sunday (most likely a church constructed of leaves and twigs, but a church none the less) and would welcome you to their nest with a pecan pie. I would hardly spend a second watching a city squirrel, but a woods born squirrel deserves hours of admiration. They survive hawk, ice, storm, falling branches, hunter’s lead, bullet and bow, and still persevere against these horrors to fill the woods with their chattering laughter and whimsical movements every day of the year. What incredible creatures! You may laugh at my love for wild squirrels, but I suggest you try a bit of squirrel watching before you laugh too hard.

The first squirrel appears! Most likely, he or she will be in the trees. Moving quietly, quickly, sneakly, it almost seems like they aren’t there at all. You may only catch a tail twitch, or a furry blur in the trees. These are the spies and scouts of Squirreldom. They know you are there, or at least that you were there even if they can’t see you. Their job is to come out and make sure that you pose no threat to their nation. Squirrels apparently have no qualms with a surveillance state. As long as you keep still, and don’t make so much noise, they will send back memos stating that you must have gone down the ridge or back to the lake. These memos, little chirps and grunts spoken into the treetops, will soon rebound through the trees as the squirrels begin to talk to each other. Soon it dawns on you that the squirrels are everywhere, and that you are outnumbered! The tree tops bellow with the sound of them. They hoot and holler like a family gathering 2 hours after the Jack Daniels comes out. Best to stay quiet, as the first squirrels now approach the ground. They move cautiously at first, playing a forest adaptation of The Floor is Lava. Jumping from log to log like crickets fleeing when a rock is flipped over, they stand at the ready to scurry back up a tree at the first sign of danger. The best course of action is to do nothing until they calm down.

Another minute or two, and the squirrels will become to forage in earnest. This is where the regal nature of the squirrel will be on full display. I suggest observing the biggest one you can, a fox squirrel being preferable. Assuming you are watching in early fall, when the mast of the forest pitters to the ground around you like soft rain, you’ll see a peculiar pattern that the squirrels adopt. They scurry forward a few feet and then stop and shove a nut into their mouth. Some I presume to be eaten, and some are shoved into their cheeks for future storage. After that, they stand on their hind legs and look around while they munch on their little snack. In this moment, they look like kings surveying their kingdoms. Something about the confidence in their eyes proves to me that the squirrels subscribe to some sort of Jeffersonian system, each squirrel being the king of his own territory. I don’t understand why they do this. I understand the need to look for predators, but from an outside perspective this seems like dangerous behavior on their part. On the ground they can fall prey to the Jeffrey Dahmers and Ed Geins of their world (foxes, weasels, and hawks), which have a harder time nabbing them in the trees. It seems unnecessary. But who am I to judge? Humans are known to indulge in dangerous behavior, and you don’t hear the squirrels complaining. Maybe they do complain, and we just don’t speak enough squirrel to understand it. Either way, this scurry, shove, stand routine will continue for minutes on end, until the squirrel is contented and runs back up his tree.

If for some reason you can’t find a squirrel, I suggest looking for squirrel poles. Squirrel poles are fallen trees that lead directly from the ground to the treetops. To a squirrel, these are highways, direct routes from food to shelter, just the same as the freeway gets you from the job you hate to KFC and back in 20 minutes. Betraying their usual cautious routine, squirrels run across them with abandon, racing like little furry Nascars up and down the poles, sometimes multiple times a minute. Trappers of old knew this and would often set snares on home made poles to catch themselves dinner. Today, very few people trap squirrels, making their highways safe once again. Hopefully they’ll be safe for all eternity, but for some reason I doubt it.

If you don’t see any squirrel poles, the next best advice is to look for squirrels in the tree tops. You won’t see the squirrel, at least at first. What you’ll see is upper branches shaking and shivering, seemingly jumping of their own accord. If you can trace the sound of the leaves moving, you can get ahead of the squirrel and find it in the trees, just like putting the bead on a grouse before you shoot it. To see a squirrel run in the tree tops is to see a thing so in its element that it fears nothing at all. The prospect of falling out of the tree seems an impossibility to them. Squirrels don’t jump through the tree tops as much as they vault from leaf to leaf, flying from branch to branch. They never stop unless they want to, something us humans unfortunately can’t understand. One has to wonder why they come down from the trees at all, seeing how agile they are in the leaves. They flutter, they flip, they roll, they do a thousand other things I couldn’t even name because only squirrels can do them. To watch a squirrel in the trees is to watch something fulfilling its ultimate goal in life. Squirrels were made to be in the trees, a blatantly obvious fact to anyone who takes the time to watch them.

The squirrels are out and moving now, your intrusion into their fief a distant memory. Only now will they begin to talk. See, squirrels are smarter than we give them credit for. They realized that humans fear intelligent things, things that remind us of ourselves. Maybe it makes us feel bad for all the things we’ve done against them. We dehumanize squirrels for the same reason parents who murder their children choke them from behind; it’s easier not to look them in the eyes as you kill them. If we believe, and I mean truly believed, that squirrels were intelligent, rational creatures, then we’d probably kill them all the quicker. We can’t leave any witnesses. Our secret hope, unspoken by all but the insane and the evil, is that if we kill all the intelligent and good things in the world, than there will be nothing left to testify to our evil deeds. If you burn down a house, you better kill the occupants so they don’t get you thrown into jail. Of course, I’m not talking about county jail, more like cosmic jail, Heaven and Hell and all that jazz. Better that we be truly alone on this big blue marble, with nothing smart enough to criticize us.

Because of this, squirrels refuse to talk until they are alone. They play us for fools, preferring to let us believe that they are nothing but sacks of flesh ticking to an evolutionary clock. It has kept them safe this long, even as we are busy killing the wolves and orangutangs and gorillas and dolphins and whales and elephants. But with you safely hidden away, they chat with abandon. Whirs and barks and chirps fill the air in a symphony Bach could only dream of reproducing. And even though I don’t speak squirrel fluently, I can usually get a general idea of what is going on. I haven’t been able to talk back, something about not having the body necessary to make the syllables needed, but I can usually understand the gist of the conversation. A chirping in the trees is a greeting, calling out to other squirrels that life is good. When two squirrels chase back and forth, they will bark at each other, but softly, kindly, a friendly banter between two friends. A whirring sound is a squirrel bragging about all the nuts he or she found. If, on the other hand the squirrels are fighting, then they will bark loudly, like chihuahuas yapping on a hot Mexican night. You can hear it from across the forest, literally yelling at each other. I would assume that the fight is about females or nuts, two valid reasons for fighting in my book. Or maybe one squirrel was trespassing on another’s territory. Whatever the cause of the dispute may be, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that squirrels air their disputes for all to hear, and you will hear it. You may even see violence, or at least the threat of violence. Squirrels fight in all three dimensions. They chase each other and climb at the same time, biting and nipping their enemies to the death. In a life as short as a squirrels, everything is to the death, even on a calm and sunny day.

One thing I’ve heard scientists harp on time and time again is that it is unscientific and unacademic to anthropomorphize animals. “Even if they seem to be doing intelligent things,” they say, “it’s a coincidence, and nothing more.” Well I call bullshit. In fact, the greater crime so called scientists commit is to underestimate such animals. Do I think that a squirrel is going to drive a car, speak Chinese, juggle, cat call a women, build a boat, eat ramen, or do any number of activities humans do on a daily basis. No! But just because squirrels do squirrelly things instead of human things, we shouldn’t assume that they don’t have any agency. Take the nuts squirrels bury at the beginning of winter. It’s repeated over and over again that squirrels forgot where they bury most of their nuts. In doing so, they accidentally plant the nuts and seeds that become, give or take 50 years, the trees of the forest. We assume the squirrels forget because a dumb little animal couldn’t possibly remember all that. I don’t think so! A much more rational theory, formulated after an hour of squirrel watching, is that squirrels are gardeners, tending to the forest as we tend to a patch of tomatoes. Why wouldn’t a squirrel, looking at a choice black walnut or acorn, decide to plant it in the name of all his squirrel offspring to come. When squirrels proclaim their territory, is that just mindless babble? Or can you hear even from a gap as large as our language barrier a bold proclamation? “This black walnut tree was planted by my fathers father, and now it is mine. I will protect and defend it from all danger, for my children and their children into infinity.” I like to think of squirrels as little forest hobbits, caring for their chosen woods as hobbits do for the Shire. As I sit writing this and as you sit reading this, the squirrels are out there, planting, sowing, and reaping as they have done for millions of years. They are the little workers who keep the whole system working, tending and pruning. It’s pretty funny if you think about it. Humans think we are so important but go out into the woods and we are nothing but freeloaders banking off the generosity of the squirrels.

Squirrel watching can end in numerous ways. When I go squirrel hunting, it ends with a small explosion, a spread of lead, and a dead squirrel. As soon as I pull the trigger, every squirrel in the area runs for cover. For 15 minutes or more they’ll stay traumatized, quivering in hidey holes and tree top abodes like mice under a lawn mower until I pick up their fallen friend and walk away, to be remembered in myths and legends that squirrel young will hear in the nest on cold winter mornings. You may think me cruel for shooting something I can write 3 pages about, and that very well may be. But I ask you to consider this. Later, when I get home and rip the squirrel’s body apart, when I reach into his rib cage and pull out his organs, am I not knowing that squirrel more deeply than anyone else, in the only way I can. I’m no squirrel. I’m only a human, and as much as I sometimes wish it were different, I can never cross that path. I can never understand squirrels the way they understand themselves. I’m just following my nature, same as them. What I can say about squirrels is that after having stalked them for years, it brings me some sadness to be enemy to a people that in another life I reckon could have been very good friends. My kind hasn’t been kind to squirrels. I can’t change that. I haven’t even been kind to squirrels. The least I can do is write them a little story. Maybe this is a confession, or maybe it’s a eulogy. I couldn’t tell you. All I can say is that the next time someone says that squirrels can’t talk, that they don’t love and hate and grow and change and eat and sleep and give birth and die, oh how they die, just like us, you can smirk a little bit. Now you know better.

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It was my fault, for a variety of reasons. I mean, I could have left early. Or taken the bus. Or asked a friend for a ride. And even when I decided to take an uber, I didn’t have to talk to the driver. I could have sat there in silence and played on my phone, pretending to be another dumb gringo whose only Spanish consisted of the words cerveza and por favor. But no, I just had to talk to the guy. That’s what you get for being conversational. All I wanted to do was go to the airport and pick up my family. Sitting under those yellow lights, tapping my foot on the cobbled street while I waited, I had no idea what I was about to see. If I did, I would never have gotten in the car when he showed up.

A grey fiat with no back seat, only a passenger side door pulled up in front of me. In retrospect it was a red flag, but I couldn’t have known that at the time. After a minute of convincing him that I actually spoke Spanish, we started chatting.

Our conversation only went south when I asked him what he did for work, besides driving for uber. In that moment, he saw an opening. He deftly and quickly responded

“I run a cantina. A cantina where you can meet and stay with girls.”

Now, I don’t claim to be a particularly intelligent individual, but I’m smart enough to read between the lines. He must have thought the opposite, because he felt the need to go further. Wanting to make his point clear, he reiterated.

“Like prostitution. I guess you could call me a…..pimp!”

I would have laughed if I knew he was joking. He wasn’t Suddenly there I was, stuck in the front seat next to a Mexican pimp. Something about a young dumb American makes a Mexican pimp’s eyes go wild with greed, and this guy was no exception. His Spanish was light and airy, but my first thought was that I was, to put it gently and kindly, fucked. I know that none of you reading this have ever met me, so I feel the need to assure you that I was not going to take him up on his “services”. Not only do I have a lovely, intelligent, and beautiful girlfriend, but a Mexican hooker sounds about as appealing as a roadside lobotomy performed by a 10 year old alcoholic.

I was worried how he would take that answer. Pimps aren’t known for their kindness, and visions of my starring role in a cartel beheading video flashed through my brain. Sadly, I suspect that most gringos that got into his uber had a much different answer in their heads. A bunch of factory workers and managers from the States ready to party were most likely his usual clientele. In fact, I’m sure some people will read this article and think to themselves how lucky I was to find a guy like this so quickly. To those people, I pray for your soul and wish for your downfall. I really was scared though. I looked for a gun or some kind of weapon in his car, worried he was gonna try and threaten me. From what I know about pimps, they don’t seem to be above a bit of robbery to make ends meet. Thankfully there weren’t any weapons that I could see. I desperately wanted to get out of the car, but it was a 45-minute drive, and I was trapped. With nothing left to do, I kept talking.

It would have been a beautiful drive if he wasn’t so insistent on getting my business. We flew up the highway, circling the dry hills. Cactus and mesquite bushes lined the road, and the stars, however dull, were out. However, I wasn’t focused on the scenery. My attention was primarily on the skeezy dude in the driver’s seat. He was putting on a hard sell, showing me photos of his women, telling me about how he could send them right to my hotel. Fun fact—telling the pimp you have a girlfriend does not convince them you don’t want a hooker. If anything it made him more interested in me. He kept pushing, extolling his business like he was on Shark Tank and I was Mark Cuban.

I on the other hand was trying to be nice, as nice as one can be in such a situation. I thought if I just kept talking, he would finally get the picture, and we would be done with this conversation. He must have got bored with me, because he switched topics. He pulled out his phone and started showing me pictures. First of his women, scantily clothed and ready for action, and then of a different photo. With a twinkle in his eye, he proclaimed, “They say this town is a safe place, but let me tell you it isn’t, not at all.” He told me “Here, look at this!” And on his phone, for just a second, was a photo of a dead women. Or at least I thought so. He jerked his phone back so he could grab the wheel.

“I….found her.” The pimp declared.

Sure buddy. Sure you did. In all honesty, he probably did just find her. Or maybe it was all a joke. Maybe he felt like pulling the wool over another dumb American. It’s been known to happen before. But something felt different about this. Like maybe he knew more than he was letting on. I’ll never be sure, except for the dark pit in my stomach that I can still feel today. It felt like certainty, like knowing something you wish you didn’t. He put the phone away.

We kept talking. If I’m being honest, it was a weirdly pleasant talk, the maybe murder confession notwithstanding. By far it was the longest conversation I’ve ever had with an uber driver. We talked about life, about business, about everything. His cantina was drug free. His brother was an addict, and drugs had ruined his life, so he made sure to stay far away from them. For a second he sounded almost caring, and I found it funny that a peddler of vices like him was so anti-narcotic. He had lived in Baja for a few years but had to move away after a nasty divorce. His ex wife was, in his own words, a puta. (Even if you don’t speak Spanish I bet you can fill in the blanks.) When I asked him why he became an uber driver, he said it was so that he could find new johns and new women. I shuddered thinking about what would have happened if I was a women in that car, even though he said that all his “workers” wanted to be there. He told me about managing his women, how they always fought with each other. “Like my daughters!” he exclaimed with a knowing smile. He kept trying to get me to visit his cantina, but not in a pushy way, more like the way you invite an old friend to your house.

“The least you could do is go for a drink,” he nudged.

When I told him I didn’t drink, he sounded almost offended. But he said it in such a way that it felt like he was joshing with a friend and not just hating on me. To be fair, a sober college student is not something you run into every day. I told him about why I was in Mexico, why I was studying Spanish. While I avoiding divulging any personal information about myself, I shared a lot. Maybe more than I should have, but I shared none the less. In those brief 45 minutes, I formed a deep connection with this person, this pimp. It’s weird thinking back on it, the way we formed our bond. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to. I know what he did and who he was. But when you talk to a person, no matter who they are, you form a rapport. In spite of our differences, and in spite of who he was, we shared a brief moment. We learned about each other, swapped stories, shared parts of ourselves. We both knew we would almost certainly never meet again, and that sort of finality gives a sort of openness to any conversation. We both sat there trying to learn as much about the other person before the ride ended and we were cast into the abyss that was the wider world outside the car.

And then he dropped me off. I said thank you, and he offered to drive me back home afterwards, an offer I politely declined. He drove off and I walked into the airport, rattled but otherwise completely fine.

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I still think about him a lot. Not because he was a pimp. Prostitution is unfortunately a fact of life no matter where you live. Until the sun stops shining and the Earth stops turning women, men, and sadly even children will continue selling their bodies. And it isn’t even because it was a cool story to tell. I mean, it certainly helps, but there was something more to this brief interaction than simply the adrenaline rush it gave me.

So why do I remember him so vividly? If I had to put a finger on it, I think it was his eyes. They were different. Sure, they were a normal color, and they didn’t shoot laser beams or thunderbolts, but there was something behind them. A darkness. A fire. A little demon playing on the controls. It was like he was wearing a mask. And when the mask fell, when he talked about his divorce or his business, a little bit of the evil in his head poked through. The kind of evil the Bible talks about. Have you ever met someone like that? I bet you have. They smile, they laugh, their clothes are clean, their hair is brushed, but something about them is distinctly off. They seem shifty, shady, slimy. If you’re a woman, it’s the guy who hits on you at the party that makes you want to cover your drink. You don’t know why, or even how you know it, but you still slide your hand over your cup because some part of your conscious knows that caution is warranted when he’s around.

The part that scared me the most was that he seemed to love what he did. This was no pauper. He wasn’t some poor women turning tricks to put food on the table. He had business partners and revenue streams. He could have done anything he wanted, and he decided to run a brothel. Why would anyone choose that? That’s what scared me about him. I’m not naïve. I know people do bad things when push comes to shove. I don’t think any of us can say what we would do if we were backed into a corner. Would you kill to save your own life? Would you kill for your family? Would you steal a loaf of bread if you were starving? I would! Who wouldn’t? We talk about restorative justice and empathy because deep down we believe that everyone who does something bad was pushed to do it. If only they had received the proper care, a better home life, a different future, then they wouldn’t be facing the jury. But sometimes that’s not what happens. Sometimes people are evil because they feel like it, because they want to be. Oft quoted advice tells us to “love what we do” and this man sure seemed to love it.

A mad man isn’t horrifying. He’s scary if he’s swinging an axe at your face, but he isn’t horrifying. He’s more like a lion in a trap. He kills because he knows nothing else, or because he’s gone mad. Even though you run and fear for your life, you know that what he is doing is simply in his nature. He is an animal. The man who loves sin is not an animal. He is an elevated being, a human, who fully understands good and evil and chooses to turn away from the light because it sounded fun. The real horror is neither madman nor mugger nor maniac. No, real terror is the worker at Dachau who works there because they like it, who goes to work every day just to hear the sounds of the gas chamber, and the cries of the women and children as they die. It’s the scammer who scams not for money, but because they love the feeling of taking from others. To them, nothing is better than watching an elderly women send them her life savings, savings they’ll spend on slop they don’t need just because. It’s the brothel owner who is in it for the love of the game, who falls asleep every night to the sounds of sex and abuse. Big Daddy Kane once said that “pimping ain’t easy” and he was right. If you are smart enough to be a pimp, then you a smart enough to do anything but pimping. He was a pimp because he liked it. That’s real evil. That’s the Devil that walks among us. A man who surrounds himself with such evil because he enjoys it is clearly a bad man, a fallen man, someone who needs to be stopped. I’d rather a thousand criminals of necessity be freed to put a man like this away, because criminals of necessity can be stopped. Criminals who do it because they love the sin cannot be stopped, because who can be stopped from following what they truly love?

Sometimes it keeps me up at night. The idea that walking amongst us, there are men who dream of whores, semen-stained bedsheets, bottles of tequila, black mold in the corners of a shitty Mexican brothel. I don’t know what to do about it. I know that may be disappointing to hear. I spout off knowledge in my writings, pretending to have an answer to the questions I propose. Some of you may have come to expect answers from me, if not good answers than at least my answers. Frankly, my “writing” is often just me pretending to know things. I could lie. I could tell you that the Bible has a response to this. In practical terms, the Bible’s response is “get used to it bud.” Stuff like this is going to keep happening as long as the world is turning, so says the good book. There’s no ritual or prayer I’ve ever heard that stops the evil across the whole world, in this moment. I could turn to the government and say that we need to pass this policy or that policy to end it, but we both know that’s a load of baloney. If the cops weren’t making money off of this guy’s bribes, they were at least looking the other way. Remember, this is Mexico. Corruption is the law of the land in higher office, and money covers up misdeeds like whiskey covers up past mistakes. (This would never happen in American!) I could say that we just need to support another NGO, another charity, and then the world would be happy forever. But let’s be real. As much as I love a good charity, they won’t change everything. There’s no power on Earth that can stop evil people from doing evil deeds.

Another scam, another scheme, another war. Evil will continue, as it always had and always will. The truth is that this problem has no solution because it is the problem. Like, this is the problem that every philosopher, every religion, every crackpot, every professor, everybody who was ever anybody has wanted to answer. I’ve heard good theories, I’ve heard bad theories, but I’ve never heard an answer. Maybe we aren’t supposed to know the answer. Maybe we are just supposed to do the best we can not to be enjoyers of evil, and to fight it when we see it. Maybe that’s all we can do. Is it enough? Certainly not. Evil will persist. Consider knowing that your ticket to life here on this big blue ball we call home. While it may not feel ok, it kinda has to be ok. Some say if you can’t beat em, join em. That’s a stupid phrase invented by cowards. If you can’t beat em, you shouldn’t join em. But you can’t let it drive you crazy. You can’t solve all of the world’s problems. You couldn’t even solve one of the world’s problems. The best you can do is to fight that evil impulse in your own heart and not let evil consume you. I promise you that should be enough to keep you busy for a good long while.

Wow! That got a little ranty at the end. I’m out of breath and ready for a nap. Anyhowsie, that’s my story of a pimp in Mexico and what he taught me about life. It wasn’t a happy story, but hopefully it was a good one. For all of those who are still reading, stay frosty and my God bless you. Have a good day!

P.S. If you want to support my Substack, I have a buy me a coffee. You can give me money if you want. There is no pressure at all, but I do appreciate it. It helps me keep the lights on over here at Hemlock HQ!

buymeacoffee.com/Hemlockhobo

So, what can we do? We must work, or at the very least fulfil our basic obligations. Fate forces us to keep to our routines against our deeper nature. Well, unless you want to role over and just accept it, you need an adventure. Adventure jailbreaks us from the neural pathways we inhibit. It forces us to think differently to feel differently, to be differently. When we do something crazy or new, the pathways we often travel are completely disregarded for new and exciting vistas. It’s hitting the power button on a computer.

“But Hemlock”, I can hear people whining, “I don’t have time for an adventure. I’m too busy, I’m too tired.” Hey, not everyone is meant to have an awesome life. No in all seriousness, I totally understand the complaint. I would love to spend 6 weeks in Greenland right now, but I’ve got stuff I need to do. The good news is that an adventure doesn’t have to be complicated, expensive, or long. When you get stuck into the same routine, even a quick deviation is a huge change for your brain. Going to a new restaurant is an adventure. Hiking for even an hour is an adventure. Heck, driving home on a new route is an adventure if you treat it as such. I wish everyone who reads this could take a year to do whatever they wanted to, and if you can that’s great. But you could take a weekend, or a day off. You don’t need money. The only thing you really need is a sense of adventure. Literally, start off by announcing that you are going on an adventure. Prepare your brain for the journey, no matter how short it is. Once you do this, all you have to do is actually take the adventure. Have fun! Take it easy!

Our lives are too regimented and segmented. You have to break that pattern if you want to stay sane. By choosing right now, as you’re reading, to go on an adventure, you change the routine. You break free. Like a prisoner seeing the sun for the first time in a hundred years, your brain will feel the difference. So let me ask you again, have you been on an adventure lately? You better say yes the next time I ask you!

This is just a quick update on the state of the blog. I have been super busy lately, and I just haven’t had the time to put towards writing. so, I am taking a brief hiatus from the blog. It should only last about 1 month. Then, I’ll have finished my job and be back to being a full-time writer.

Don’t unsubscribe! I promise when I get back…

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