A rough outline of the year to come on Beck of the Pack, probably accurate within applicable limits
I'd shut the fuck up if I could
I first started blogging back in the summer of 2004 on a Google-provided site I named The Pungent Aftertaste of Cognitive Emesis. Even then, despite having set most of my lifetime personal bests as a recreational-class perambulator that year and being a senior writer for Running Times who was not quite done editing Run Strong, I found myself using the platform to explore all manner of subjects unrelated to running, primarily the culture wars of the day.
Admittedly, I have always liked to complain about bullshit that many others either don’t see as bullshit or don’t see as important enough to devote thousands of words a week to complaining about. Regardless, this habit didn’t used to consume nearly as much time and energy as it does now simply because there was far less obvious bullshit in circulation and no means on the part of the bullshitters to force everyone to either accept what they were saying unquestioningly or be fired, marginalized, or in the best case—such as mine—stoically but furtively ignored. And as a few hoary readers will recall, the tone of these posts was typically far more caustic than anything I’ve written in recent years, but no one felt inclined to report me to any relevant editorial authorities.
Twenty years ago, anyone connected to running who used “blogging” as a verb was probably regarded by many of the sport’s elders in the same skeptical way as people my age look at anyone today calling themselves an influencer or rambling about “diversifying” this or that running environment. And in my own way, I arguably abused emerging technologies in the same basic way today’s chattering class does, and I had to go to more trouble to do it. I built my own website in 1998, and within a couple of years had added a message board that for a while drew a surprising number of regular visitors. Add that to writing for various running outlets, and it’s safe to say I was Putting Myself Out There and inviting others to put their own egos on display.
This was all a lot more fun before social media arrived, which made athlete interviews next to pointless unless the interviewer was modestly creative in his or her preparation and slowly handed over more literal influence to ass-waggling Instagram and TikTok housewives (mostly from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex) and hypersensitive Millennials emerging—at least chronologically—into the adult world.
The advent of forced “social justice” starting in around 2019 and reaching apocalyptic heights the following year introduced to this restive online miasma a flurry of demented race grifters, gender-spastic lunatics, white women bashing any white male in sight except for those pretending to be or easily mistaken for women, and most of all continually prowling speech police who themselves never, ever respond to inquiries about their own speech or actions, a dismal but understandable brand of reticence given that these people are flagrant liars, hypocrites, outright sputtering ignoramuses, and social arsonists unpretentiously looking to make a buck no matter the cost to anyone or anything else.
Things are different now. Not all of this is bad, however. Many of the over one hundred articles I’ve written since 1999 for paying outlets have naturally disappeared from the searchable Web thanks to changes in the ownership of the pertinent publications; most of the rest have disappeared unnaturally thanks to degraded and cowardly bungwipes at Outside and Runner’s World deleting these from their sites. These people are all absolute, unpretentious trash, and I intend regularly to force-feed them focused reminders of their feeble-minded and craven disposability concerning all human endeavors, even if they’re too stupid and avaricious to care about the lowbrow, facile paths they’re chosen.
Because I have access to all of these articles and can provide this access to others, I’ve decided to make reviewing my published work a regular feature. My intent is to tease out things I got wrong or could use basic updating thanks to changes in technology since the time these articles were published. I plan to release about one of these posts a week, and at least two every three weeks. Once I get started on this kind of writing, it’s easy for me to pay attention to little else and create a half-dozen passable posts in a very short time.
Maybe what I will do is write about fifty of these in the next two weeks, schedule them to be posted every Friday the 13th that includes a full moon, and rapidly bury myself in the desert outside Las Vegas. I’m wondering how long I or any consistent Substack writer can publish posthumously without anyone figuring out the writer is dead and shaking his head at all of the marks out there, some of them renewing their paid subscriptions.
In addition, over two years ago, I promised to write a series of ten articles about important events in distance-running history “in the weeks to come.” I am only three articles in, but technically, somehow, weeks are still coming. So this is another project I plan to resume, as these posts tend to be disproportionately popular.
As far as the running media, running’s grifter-bozo-harridan class, and the still-intensifying culture wars, when I look at the sheer amount of content I’ve cranked out in this area, it gives the impression this stuff bothers me a great deal. In reality, anything pertaining to the dilapidation of running or any sport can only affect my state of mind to a limited extent, as other things affecting my own and almost all of my readers’ lives are the things that chase me into dark corners of nihilistic reflection. Being familiar with running as a dissectible pursuit as well as having been a member of its media for two decades or so just makes it tantalizingly easy to belch out 3,000 imperious and dyspeptic words about the shenanigans of today’s pundits on command. Some of you have sent me links to items I was unaware of and seen lengthy posts about these items within two hours.
My main concern remains the grimly complementary combination of disinformation (a formal term for “bullshit”) and speech suppression by the U.S. Government and the Western media. Most people, if they’re honest, admit the country is badly askew and in sharp decline, and the people seeking to retain power understand that huge portions of longstanding ruses are collapsing, particularly with respect to the real history of the Middle East since 1948 or so.
One easily predicted feature of 2024 is a ramping up the organic confusion within the citizenry using automated and semi-automated means of production. While I normally hesitate to directly embed social-media posts because I don’t like to encourage the use of these platforms, this one is worth a watch.
Other than the fact that Jill Biden probably wouldn’t say these things in a sit-down interview even if all of them are true, is there any easy way to tell that this isn’t her speaking the words audible in the video? (Tip, but not a “pro” one: It’s probably wise to not become famous enough to have your life potentially ruined by your enemies making one of these and destroying you across every Internet platform before you can even issue a response.)
Anyone who doesn’t want to blow a gasket after reading what I have to say on the treatment of the Israel-Palestine situation should watch this video. Or at least listen to it—I don’t look at the screen when corpses are being described.
And if you choose not to watch it despite this issue almost certainly having an impact on your own life, ask yourself why almost all of The Grayzone’s YouTube videos are demonetized by Google operatives. Is this because they’re publicizing deeply inconvenient truths or because The Grayzone’s staff consists of lying, antisemitic, peacenik Jews?