I just want to go on the record that I’m 100% in favor of shaming people for not knowing things everyone should know. I could care less why you don’t know the moon is lit by the sun or the basic structure of your own government or where Africa is in relation to Europe. I just don’t care. This is your personal failure. If you don’t want to be mocked for it, never speak out loud or try to add your voice to the conversation, because you have nothing to contribute.

Seriously. I’m not gonna ever back down on this. I am absolutely cool with being an elitist, if elitism means expecting grown people to know a certain set of facts. So cool with it. I might actually buy a monocle and start looking through it down my nose at ignorant ass people. So unapologetic. Don’t care at all about hurting people’s feelings. They should be hurt. They should feel bad and either do better or shut up.

I am still a smoker, but even when I quit I’m going to need a lighter. I’m that weirdo who actually refills the little cheapo plastic ones with canned butane, which makes em last for months… but in my heart I am a Zippo man. I’ve bought a couple of them here, but they’re all shitty copies that don’t have proper parts and break down after a few months.

So I have an authentic matte black Zippo and flints and wicks arriving today - cheaper because it does not have the Zippo logo on the side but a Zippo nonetheless.

I’m going to take it to Timpson’s on the high street - a chain of small shoe repair and keymaking kiosks that largely employs ex-cons as a policy - and get two words engraved on it:

BELLA CIAO.

If you know what those words mean - not in Italian but what they mean - you will know why I want them engraved on the side of a reliable lighter even if I quit smoking.

I might have to return to America some day, after all.

[Update: Pics]

Don’t y’all see? WEAPONIZE THIS. The entire system relies upon your participation and they cannot force you to comply, only threaten you with deprivation if you don’t. And you’re already suffering deprivation, aren’t you? You’re not paid enough to live comfortable anyway. You can’t afford the stuff they want you to buy anyway. So why keep running on the same fucking treadmill?

Remember how the pandemic just scared the shit out of everyone? How having less consumers and less employees killed off entire industries? And that was by accident. Do you get that if you simply stopped buying anything but survival stuff you could tank these companies?

They don’t think the way you do. They’re beholden to shareholders who demand not only a return on investment but perpetual growth, and who are skittish as newborn colts. If you can reduce sales for a given company in a given year by 10%, you’ve fucked them. Doesn’t matter how many billions they make, you’re still spooking their investors and the market, which is based on absolutely nothing but vibes. Literally nothing else. You can cause chaos by causing doubt. The best part is, you can just straight up say that’s what you’re doing and it won’t make any difference.

General labor and consumer strikes will absolutely wreak havoc. They’ll go on CNN and rant like lunatics: BUY STUFF! JUST BUY ANYTHING! AND COME TO WORK! Because they can arrest you for protesting and they can arrest you for sabotaging pipelines, but they cannot arrest you for not buying shit and not going to work.

You would have to face the possible consequences, but would you rather be scared and stressed because some rich asshole decided to wring another dollar profit out of you or because you were standing up against fascism and trying to turn humans into machines fit only to work and die?

General strikes in 2025. Decide to do it and do it.

Do you know the thing that will make a lot of people angrier than almost anything else? If you look them in the eye and tell them: “Nobody is trying to kill you or rape you and nobody wants to kill or rape your spouse or kidnap or molest your children. You have nothing anyone wants enough to take it by theft or force. Any time you get scam messages on the Internet? It’s automated. Nobody is targeting you to scam or con. Nobody wants to get in your house. You could leave the doors unlocked for the rest of your life and nothing would happen. Nobody wants to sell you or your kids drugs. You are no one’s target and you never will be.”

I know this, and it’s why I live my life with no fear of other people. It’s why I have spent decades walking totally alone into places that even cops and soldiers don’t go without backup, and walking out without ever even raising my voice, much less getting hurt or killed. I know that nobody cares. And I’m not inconspicuous, unless I’m at a NASCAR rally or ComicCon. I’m big and very white. But I still get left alone for the most part and, despite actively tempting fate by going into far more dangerous places at dangerous times than most people ever do, I’m fine. Happy as a clam. Completely at home pretty much everywhere.

Most violent crimes - including sexual assault - are perpetrated by the victim’s friends, family, neighbors or acquaintances. The reason serial killers were able to operate with impunity for many years is because all criminal investigation is based upon this simple fact. Very few robberies or home invasions are nearly as random as their victims believe they are. The robber is almost always tipped to the fact that something in the house is worth the risk of stealing it. Online crime is a percentage game - if you send a million scam emails and two people with money respond, it’s worth it. Muggings and pickpocketing are down because no one carries cash and phones are too easy to find (unless you’re sending them to China). Cars have alarms and GPS too. Basically, the only actual real world crimes committed by strangers anymore are kids breaking your car window because you left your purse in it and junkies with angle grinders taking your catalytic converter.

So you don’t need a gun, unless you’ve given yourself a reason to carry a gun. Home security is not a reason to carry a gun. You can solve that with a good security/camera system or bars on your windows if you’re that worried, which you shouldn’t be. If you’d rather have a gun than bars on your windows, that tells me a great deal about your personality: namely, that you’d rather kill another person than be inconvenienced or confronted by the truth that you do, in fact, live your life in fear.

A “responsible“ gun owner is like a “benevolent“ dictator: they are until they aren’t. Every prick who murdered a teenager for the crime of walking while black or mowed down a classroom of children was a responsible gun owner… right until they weren’t.

England gives lie to the idea that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Criminals here don’t have guns. In fact, if you were to go out in an empty lot in London and fire a gun a few times harmlessly in the air, it would make the national news the next day. There were 22 gun-related deaths here in 2024, out of a population of 66 million or so. There are probably less guns in all of Great Britain - aside from in the armories of the handful of police authorised to use them and on military bases - than there are in Akron, Ohio.

So people stab each other to death, sure, but you know what nobody ever does? Accidentally stab someone across the street from the person they wanted to stab. On the rare occasions someone goes apeshit and commits a mass stabbing, most or all of the victims survive. The difference is both quantitative and qualitative.

I don’t think no Americans need guns. I’ve lived in rural areas where people hunt for meat they can’t afford to buy and get grizzlies at the back porch or have cattle that need protecting from predators. There are lots of rich and famous people who are targeted by strangers who probably need some kind of armed protection. But all of that could be handled by sensible licensing laws.

The fact that you have to prove you can drive to own a car but don’t have to prove you can shoot a gun to own one is preposterous and no sane person, even a rabid gun aficionado, would disagree with me except on the spurious grounds of stretching both the letter and the intent of the Second Amendment as far as you possibly could. Nobody says it’s a violation of the First Amendment to make it a criminal offense to shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater or explicitly call for violence against a citizen; so we are OK with sensible limitations on our rights.

Why is it not sensible to say that if you want to own a murder machine, you should have to prove you’re mentally stable and capable of hitting what you point it at and obtaining insurance in case somebody gets dead with your gun?

I think what worries a lot of gun nuts is the idea that they couldn’t pass those tests or afford to be responsible for what they do with their guns… and that is the very best argument I can think of for having those restrictions.

But the harder truth to face might not be that you’re not sane or evenhanded enough to have a gun; it’s that you probably don’t need one because you are neither a threat nor a target to anyone on earth - that nobody else even wants what you hold so precious you’d be willing to commit murder to protect it. That’s the real violence most Americans could not bear to undergo: violence to their own sense of value and importance and being the target of other people’s anger or envy or desire.

Americans will wade through oceans of blood, but God forbid someone challenge their sense of specialness.