InstaPunk Returns

  Protected: To LS (Or Some Member Of ‘Our Side’ as They Like to Call It) Fifty years is a long time. The exact length of time I have been fighting on Our Side. Why I’m going to set down some material I’ve never written about in this way in all that time. Don’t feel obliged to read it through. I’ve learned from five years at Facebook some of the new realities of American life, including Our Side. Incuriosity. I recently resigned from my Facebook page. No one has commented on it, present company included. Some other things they haven’t done… But first an anecdote of my FB days. People have birthdays. Facebook kindly informs you of them, so you can wish them a happy happy. Which people do. All very civilized, no? I like to wish people a happy happy too. But so many ‘friends’ (200+) have accumulated that I know nothing of. So I decided to take the opportunity of trying to find a greeting that was personal even though we didn’t know each other. I’d look up their page, where they were f...

Yes, I’m still here. We’ll see how I do and how you do. Maybe we can be interesting together. Today at the Slop Factory I posted a link to a scabrous graphic. Let’s see if I can link that here. Sad disrespect for the Statue of Liberty . No need to shrug it off and move on. We’ll try a couple of other things later. How do we like this format so far? Heaven .

  Patrick and friend From FB, dated October 7, 2016: What my friend Patrick said. We're both looking down the barrel of the Big Gun. Why we trust each other so much. He has a row of Emmies earned from his National Geographic documentaries. I have a royalty check from Workman Publishing for $13. We now talk almost every day by phone. He is bravely battling the Big C. I am grateful for his friendship, no matter how late in the day it has arrived. ********* “I stumbled on Robert Laird’s blog Instapunk about ten years ago, and it changed my life. My morning ritual consisted of a cup of coffee, a cigarette, a quick look at Drudge to see if the world had collapsed, and if it hadn’t, I went to Instapunk, where I knew I would find something I hadn’t thought about before, or if I had, Robert had thought about it more deeply, and written about it more beautifully than anyone else I had read. It didn’t take long to convince me that Robert Laird was the best writer and deepest thinker of the e...