Michael Estrin's Blog

While waiting for my yoga class to begin, I noticed the woman next to me staring out the window. Across the street from the studio, one of those delivery robots came to a stop in front of a cannabis dispensary.

“I guess AI understands the concept of the munchies,” I said.

The woman next to me giggled.

“Those things are so adorable,” she said.

Another woman agreed.

“Every time I see one I want to pet it.”

“I’ve never used one,” I said. “Have you?”

Both women shook their heads no. The three of us were living in the past, evidently, still eating food delivered by humans who weren’t nearly as adorable as their robot competitors.

After yoga, I went back to work. I edited a piece about Sora 2, OpenAI’s new video-generation app. Sora 2 powers a new social network that’s exclusively for AI-generated content. Some people call this kind of content “slop,” and they argue that AI is accelerating “slopification.” Looking at a social network with 100% AI content, it’s hard to argue against that concern. AI lets us produce a seemingly infinite amount of crap quickly and at costs that approach zero. These dynamics excite two kinds of people: Those with financial stakes in AI companies and those who need to produce crap at the lowest possible cost.

For the most part, it’s fashionable for people who make stuff — writers, illustrators, filmmakers, etc. — to hate AI. They say AI is built on stolen material, which is true, but nobody wants to confront the fact that the Web is also, largely, built on stolen material. They say AI is an environmental disaster because it uses so much energy, which is also true, but nobody wants to confront the carbon footprints of cloud storage, streaming, personal devices, cars, planes, or modern civilization; the problem is AI, not the things we like, damn it. Mostly, however, they say, “nobody wants to watch AI-generated crap,” which feels true, except of course, people are watching AI-generated crap at the movies, on TV, and online.

As someone who makes stuff I wish AI would go away. If AI didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have to confront the fact that sometimes my clients hire me to make crap as quickly and cheaply as possible, even if they use words like “clickable” or “shareable” instead of crap. For most of my career, knowledge of SEO best practices, i.e., the ability to write in such a way that a machine will see value in your work, has been non-negotiable. Ostensibly, we master SEO to reach more humans, but SEO-optimized content is crap because machines have shitty taste. Actually, that’s not true. Machines don’t have any taste at all. They’re machines. But the point is this: Creating a lot of crap as cheaply as possible isn’t new. What’s new, aside from AI, is that the creative class increasingly seems to believe that anything created by humans is good / superior, while anything created with AI is shitty / inferior. Whether that’s true or not, that’s how we trick ourselves into believing that nobody wants AI-generated crap, even if they’re already consuming, liking, sharing, and paying for AI-generated crap.

Which brings me to my real beef with AI. I like my job. I’m good at it. I can make crap fast and cheap, if that’s what you want. I can also make something good for a lot more money, if you’re willing to pay. In my experience, the crowd that wants crappy stuff fast and cheap vastly outnumbers the crowd that wants quality stuff slow and expensive. But here’s the thing: My job isn’t any more, or less, important than the non-adorable delivery drivers being replaced by adorable delivery robots. I’m sure the delivery drivers are pissed about those robots. But I don’t think delivery drivers are fooling themselves into believing that their customers prefer that humans bring them their food.

After I finished editing the piece about Sora 2, I went to the hardware store. I needed a screw to fix a door hinge. Actually, the hinge was fine, but it was missing a screw. Christina had a hunch that the missing screw was the reason the door no longer shut after a recent home renovation project. The experts disagreed with Christina. Our contractor said we needed a new door. The cost? Low four figures. Our handyman said he could save the door by sanding off an eighth of an inch, then priming and painting the door. The cost? Mid three figures. We decided to go the DIY route.

At the hardware store, I found the aisle where they keep the screws, but there are, figuratively, 83 billion types of screws. Since I only know about two types of screws — flat-head and Phillips-head — I needed help. I searched for someone who worked there, but hardware stores pride themselves on their ability to place employees precisely where customers can’t find them. So I asked ChatGPT. It took longer than Google, because ChatGPT had follow-up questions.

Interior or exterior door? Interior.

Solid wood core, or MDF? Solid wood.

How many hinges on the door? Three.

Which hinge had the missing screw? The top hinge.

Which screw was missing? Top screw in the top hinge.

Approximately how much of the door was getting caught on the door jamb? Less than an eighth of an inch, but only at the top corner of the door.

Approximately how many inches from the top of the door to where it catches in the door jamb? Four inches, maybe less.

ChatGPT processed my answers and recommended a 2 ½ inch #10 Phillips-head wood screw. That particular screw was one size larger than what you’d typically use for an interior door hinge, but according to ChatGPT, a slightly larger screw would pull the hinge and the door tighter to the door jamb, possibly eliminating the need to sand and paint the door to make it fit. I was excited, so I bought the screw, but I was also skeptical, so I bought some sand paper, primer, and paint, just in case.

When I got home, I got the drill out and screwed that sucker into place. I tested the door.

Son

of

a

bitch.

ChatGPT was right.

Our contractor had tried, and failed, to fix the door twice, sanding down and repainting the area around the door jamb, before insisting that the only solution was a new door. Our handyman likely would’ve fixed it, but his plan seemed like something we could do for less money. We had asked both of these people about the missing screw, but they said that wasn’t the problem. They were wrong; the AI was right. A novice, with help from ChatGPT, had bested the pros, fixing the door better, faster, and cheaper.

At the end of the day, when we talk about AI what we’re really talking about is replacing human labor. That doesn’t make me feel particularly good. Actually, I feel lousy about it. But the degree to which I feel lousy depends on how I feel about the people being replaced. My heart is with the creative class, i.e., people just like me. But when it comes to people who aren’t like me, I love the idea of replacing them. Maybe that makes me an asshole, or maybe it just makes me human. Because maybe the delivery drivers, contractors, and handymen feel the same way. Instead of bringing me lunch and fixing my door, maybe they’re up to their eyeballs in AI-generated slop and loving it.

Shout out time!

A big human-generated thank you to for buying a paid subscription to Situation Normal! Annie, I usually send good vibes via U.S. mail, but with the shutdown I’m not taking any chances. Your good vibes will arrive via FedEx; a signature may be required.

Subscribe now

Currently, I’m four subscribers away from getting my bestseller badge back.

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, my novel is based on personal experience, funny as hell, and according to many readers, “surprisingly insightful.” Seriously, people, you’ll laugh your tits / man-boobs off.

The ebook is 99 cents, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

One hopeful spark after another

I wrote about One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, for Slacker Noir. Given the politics of this moment, I thought the movie would be bleak, but I found it to be a surprisingly hopeful story. Also, I loved it. Read all about it here.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Has a robot ever brought you food? Tell your story.

Have you ever tracked down a hardware store employee? Share your secret.

If a social network only has AI-generated content, can humans log off and let the machines entertain themselves? Explain.

What was the delivery bot doing at the cannabis dispensary, and do androids dream of electric bongs? Unhinged answers strongly encouraged.

If we’re going to use AI to replace human labor, shouldn’t we start where the money is with a CEO-GPT? Hint: Yes.

Leave a comment

Photo by Rob Martin on Unsplash

Maybe I’m an idiot, but I look to Washington for leadership. To wit: I informed my wife that I will not vote for her 2026 household budget unless she concedes to my demands.

Christina didn’t appreciate my hardball tactics, so she retaliated with a vicious social media campaign. But a viral video of me wearing a sombrero and calling myself a “bad hombre” is actually an AI deepfake. I am, in fact, a good hombre, and I prefer baseball caps to sombreros.

But sombrero-gate, as the media has taken to calling it, is a sideshow. The real story is our household budget. Folks, it’s a mess. A few examples. Rather than fund our retirement accounts, Christina bought lottery tickets, saying “you can’t retire, if you don’t win.” Instead of paying our health insurance premiums, Christina commissioned a research report on the link between vaccines and poor financial decisions. When I asked her what we’d do if we got sick, she said that wouldn’t happen, as long as we avoided high-fructose corn syrup. Honestly, that would’ve been OK by me, but when I tried switching to Mexican Coca-Cola, which uses real sugar, Christina slapped a 10,000% tariff on foreign soda. Finally, she took out a second mortgage on our house to cover the walls, floor, and ceiling of her office with gold. Actual gold. It’s a little tacky.

Anyway, I had to do something. The trouble is, I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I believe my wife’s behavior represents an existential threat to our union; her budget is unhinged, immoral, and quite possibly illegal. On the other hand, everything is totally normal and if I just do what I always do, I feel like my wife will 1) come to her senses, 2) strike a fair deal, and 3) honor the spirit and letter of said deal.

That conflicted feeling is why I went full-ostrich for September. I’m told that if you stick your head in the sand long enough, the sand gets in your eyes, and eventually blinds you such that you can’t see your problems. But now that October is here, the winds have shifted and the stand I stuck my head in blew away. That’s why, against my better (and lesser) judgment, I shut down our house. It simply had to be done. For some reason.

And you know what? Shutting it down felt good. Really good. Sure, I’m being pilloried by the press and abused on social media, but damn it, I’m taking a stand — for once. I don’t know how long I can hold out. Hell, I’m not even 100% on my list of demands. Part of me believes I shouldn’t make a deal until Christina agrees to scrap the entire budget. But another part of me thinks that maybe we can settle this dust-up if she simply agrees to continue the madness for another fiscal year. And then this whole other part of me thinks that I can’t get any real concessions, but if I make a big stink, maybe I’ll get something symbolic, like a reduction in the number of pillows on our bed.

But none of that matters. Right here, right now, our house is shut way the hell down. All I need for my coalition to hold together is for the dogs to say no to promises of steak topped with melted cheese and drizzled with peanut butter. I’ve got this, I think hope.

Shout out time!

A big thank you goes out to for purchasing a paid subscription to Situation Normal. Andrew’s decision may not be fiscally prudent, but it is a decision, and because decisions have consequences, good vibes are headed his way. Check your mail, Andrew.

Subscribe now

Currently, I’m five subscribers away from getting my bestseller badge back.

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, my novel is based on personal experience, funny as hell, and according to many readers, “surprisingly insightful.”

Seriously, people, you’ll laugh your tits / man-boobs off. And if you don’t, the ebook is 99 cents, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

How long can I hold out? Encouraging answers only.

What are my demands? Seriously, I need suggestions, and there no bad ideas in a brainstorm. Go deep!

Did you fall for the sombrero-gate deepfake, or do you have eyes that are attached to a functioning brain?

Is your household budget a mess? Share your pain.

Since my place is closed for business, can I stay at your place?

Leave a comment

Our home has floors again. Ordinarily, having floors isn’t something to write home about, or in this case, write about our home. But in July we began a bathroom remodel that was supposed to take three weeks. As it turned out, the bathroom remodel took six weeks. In the process, we sprung a leak in the bathroom that ruined the floor in our bedroom. So after we finished the bathroom remodel, we replaced the floor in our bedroom, but because the bedroom flooring connected to the hallway, my office, and our guest bedroom, we extended the project to include those areas as well. Which is why, in the closing days of September, three months after starting work on the bathroom remodel, I’m pleased to say that we once again have finished floors everywhere in our home.

Yay!

But also,

Boo.

See, the thing about remodeling a home is that it never ends. I used to believe that was a euphemism — a way of expressing the pain of a seemingly never-ending project. But now I understand the truth: It never ends.

The new floor phase of the remodel is, in fact, still ongoing. We need to put in new baseboards — an element of home decor nobody notices, unless it’s missing. We need to repaint the walls, because the process of installing polished concrete floors is akin to inviting a tornado into your home. And to install the concrete floors, we also removed the doors to the closets in our bedroom and my office, so we need new closet doors too. Also, while we’re at it, we’ll likely add more light fixtures and put in some new shelving. Then that phase will truly be done.

But there’s always another phase, because it never ends. In our case, with the new floors and new bathroom, the vision for our home is really coming together. That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: Our kitchen, along with the floors in the other half of the house, don’t fit that vision. So more remodeling is on the horizon. And of course, those projects will give birth to their own mini-projects — new paint, baseboards, a new front door, new windows, etc. I’m told we may also have to get new window treatments, which sounds like a cure for people afflicted with the condition of installing new windows, but is in fact, it’s own chronic condition.

At some point, we’ll be done. By which I mean, we’ll move on to projects that aren’t yet on the horizon — landscaping, solar, a helipad, a moat, electric eels to prevent intruders from swimming across the moat, a drawbridge to get across the moat, an electric drawbridge opener with WiFi-enabled remote control because a manual drawbridge in the twenty-first century simply won’t do. If this sounds ridiculous and stupid, it is. But as the hip hop duo Young Gunz famously said, “can’t stop, won’t stop.”

It never ends.

But like so many painful experiences in life, remodeling a home is a learning opportunity. And OK, sure, we aren’t likely to learn the big lesson, i.e. don’t do it. But we did learn some smaller lessons along the way.

1: The Money Pit was a Documentary

I used to think the 1980s movie starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long was a comedy. Then we bought a home, and I realized it was a tragedy. Now, I’m certain it’s a documentary about a couple that sacrificed their bank account, sanity, and relationship on the alter of remodeling.

2: Contractors Need More Skin in the Game

I used to believe in capitalism — we pay for material and labor, and the contractor delivers a remodeled bathroom. Now, I believe in old testament eye-for-an-eye justice. If a contractor fucks up your house, you should have the right to fuck up their house. For example, if your contractor forgets to seal the rough plumbing prior to installing the tub, and that mistake ends up ruining your bedroom floor, you’re entitled to visit their home with a crowbar, sledgehammer, and squirt gun so that you can fuck up their abode. This policy, which I’m planning to make a key plank in my Presidential platform in 2028, will either reduce construction errors, or increase vigilantism. Either way, I’m all for it.

3: Choice is a Tax on Sanity

You think you want choice. Choosing sounds good. Then you start construction, and suddenly you find yourself in a labyrinth of choices, only every choice you make draws you deeper into the maze and closer to the Minotaur because each choice has a ripple effect. I asked Christina which tile she liked best. It was an innocent question, I swear. She said that the tile choice depended on the vanity, and the vanity depended on the floor, and the floor depended on the hardware, which depended on the tile. This is what psychologists call the Ouroboros of Choosing. Just kidding. Psychologists haven’t studied couples who are remodeling their homes — the subject is too dark to contemplate.

4: Building Inspectors are Petty Tyrants

We failed our first inspection because our shower-tub didn’t have a shower curtain or door. I explained that my wife had ordered a shower curtain online and that we planned to install it as soon as it arrived, because, you know, we’re not dipshits who spray water all over the place when we shower. It didn’t matter. The inspector flunked us. A week later, a different inspector came by, but he didn’t care about the shower curtain. His beef was with another room entirely. “You can’t have a bedroom connected to the garage,” he said. The issue was carbon monoxide — a valid concern, even if we were twenty-five feet away from the bathroom, aka his jurisdiction. Regardless, I explained that the room next to the garage was my office, that we had a carbon monoxide detector installed above the door to the garage just in case, and that the only car we parked in their was electric. None of that mattered. But I offered him a Coke Zero, and somewhere between popping the top and belching out some carbon dioxide, he passed us.

5: Home Ownership Will Radicalize You

While I remain committed to democracy and the rule of law, and I believe that government has a important role to play in our society, I had some Howard Beale moments, at least as far as the department of building and safety was concerned. Frankly, we need to defund those motherfuckers ASAP.

Shout out time!

A big thank you goes out to for upgrading to a paid subscription. Check your mail, John, good vibes are headed your way. To support my work, please consider upgrading your Situation Normal subscription.

Subscribe now

As of this writing, I’m only six subscribers away from getting my bestseller badge back.

A conversation with Amran Gowani about LEVERAGE

I devoured ’s debut novel. Leverage is a thriller set in the world of a San Francisco hedge fund and a sharp satire about capitalism in 21st century America. I chatted with Amran about his book, why white collar crimes are traditionally excluded from crime fiction, and life imitating art. Do yourself a favor: Buy Amran’s book, then listen to our conversation.

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, my novel is based on personal experience, funny as hell, and according to many readers, “surprisingly insightful.”

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

*The ebook is .99, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Will it ever end? Lie to me.

Are you remodeling, or are you sane?

Two weeks?! Explain.

Do I have your vote for 2028, or do you support unaccountable contractors and petty tyrants masquerading as building inspectors?

Have you told a friend about my books? Hint: You should! Bonus: Not Safe For Work and Ride / Share make great gifts.

Leave a comment

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Did you hear the one about the political movement that spent the last decade screaming about free speech and railing against cancel culture? Here’s the punchline: Now that they’re in power, they want you to shut the fuck up, and if you don’t, they’ll cancel your ass.

Pretty funny huh?

I’m referring to the most recent Trump / MAGA attack on Jimmy Kimmel, of course. (For a good timeline of these attacks, see this CNN post). But I’m also talking about a wider attack against the rights of people who aren’t famous. While guest hosting on Charlie Kirk’s podcast, executive branch employee number two, aka Vice President JD Vance, encouraged Americans to cancel anyone who celebrated Kirk’s murder. (Note: celebrating someone’s death is protected speech in this country; if that wasn’t the case, everyone who cheered the day SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden would be in trouble). Regardless, the MAGA campaign against freedom has scored some victories. A brief, incomplete list of companies that have fired, disciplined, or investigated people for saying the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk after his death:

The Washington Post

Delta Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines

The Carolina Panthers

Microsoft

Public schools in South Carolina, New York, Massachusetts, Georgia, and Missouri

Perkins Coie

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

Office Depot

DC Comics

MSNBC

It’s understandable to be angry with these companies. I’m angry, and I suspect you are too. But looking to a private company to stand up for your rights is like looking for a ray of sunshine to escape a blackhole. A company protects its bottom line, not your rights. So let’s focus our anger at the root of the problem: a government controlled by people who are working to the silence speech of anyone who disagrees with them. Don’t take my word for it on that point, take the word of the President’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, told Vance on Kirk’s podcast:

With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, homeland security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.

For those keeping score at home, Trump followed his successful attack on Kimmel by threatening Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, saying “Do it NBC!” For those who are living under rocks, gaslit, or acting in bad faith, it refers to firing them. Because, you know, what makes America great is a President with the power of a network programming director.

Government-led attacks on speech aren’t without precedent in American history. The Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in 1798, were intended to suppress criticism of the Federalist-controlled government. Lincoln clamped down on speech during the Civil War. During the first Red Scare, Congress passed the Espionage Act as well as another Sedition Act, which prohibited “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. government, the Constitution, the military, or the flag. The Supreme upheld convictions under those laws, so if you’re waiting for the courts to “save us,” please remember that historically American courts have been in the business of fucking us over. The second Red Scare added a new term to the American political lexicon: McCarthyism. In turn, McCarthyism gave Hollywood the “black list” and unleashed purges in the public and private sectors. With extraordinary prescience in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Hunter S. Thompson wrote: “[it’s] as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators. The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.”

I could go on, but you get the point. If America is the land of the free, then we need a Texas-sized asterisk next to “free.” Throughout our history, the mantra has often been freedom for me, not for thee. Historian Heather Cox Richardson calls this the American paradox. On the one hand, we can point with pride to our founding principles of liberty, equality, democracy, and rule of law. On the other hand, American history is rich with examples where those principles didn’t apply — at least not without a fight — to large segments of American society.

The current crackdown on free speech is dangerous insofar as American history isn’t a guarantee of freedom from tyranny, but a cautionary tale about how tyrants often win, at least for a time. But the crackdown is also normal insofar as it’s of a piece with other crackdowns throughout American history. Put another way, we’re facing the same fight Americans have always faced; same shit, different day. The question is: Are we up to the task?

Honestly, I don’t know. As I told you last week, people are really bad at predicting the future. So let’s stick to the present, which is where the fight is.

Already, many of our society’s most powerful people, companies, and institutions have decided that capitulation is the correct course. At the same time, some of the least powerful people in America have stood up and pushed back, often at great personal risk. So on the one hand we have people with “fuck you money” and seemingly unlimited power running scared and people with little money or power pushing back. Some advice: If you’re looking for leadership, don’t look up; look around you at your friends and neighbors, then look in the mirror. Sooner or later, every American will have to make a choice: Bend the knee to tyranny, or raise the middle finger in defiance and face the consequences.

Which brings me back to Jimmy Kimmel. With apologies to historian Timothy Snyder, who literally wrote the book on fighting tyranny, this sad episode tells you everything you really need to know. Tyrants derive their power from fear; jokes rob fear of (some of) its punch. In the Soviet Union, people often joked, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” After the first few times you hear it, the joke isn’t haha-funny. But no matter how many times you hear it, the joke never lets you forget that an authoritarian’s power is (primarily) in your head. That’s why authoritarians like Trump attack comedians like Kimmel. Every joke is a threat to a fear-based regime.

So, here’s a joke:

New here?

Drop your email address below to receive future editions of Situation Normal. And if you’re a long-time situation normie, please consider support my work by upgrading to a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Talking LEVERAGE with Amran Gowani

My friend Amran Gowani wrote a kickass novel called Leverage. It’s a thrilling page-turner with plenty to say about white collar crime. I loved it! Amran and I will be chatting about his novel, his trip to Bouchercon this year, and why stealing a few grand is a crime, but stealing a few billion is … capitalism, baby. Catch our Substack Live this Thursday at 10am Pacific / 12pm Central.

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, my novel is based on personal experience, funny as hell, and according to many readers “surprisingly insightful.”

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

*The ebook is .99, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Heard any good jokes lately, or has humor been canceled?

Are you joking, or did you bend the knee?

Can you take a joke?

If they can’t take a joke, do you have to actually fuck ‘em, or is that just an idiom?

What’s so funny?

Leave a comment

Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

Some hump days sneak up on you. This past Wednesday I woke up early and spent the morning finishing a draft about America’s most recent geopolitical folly — an own goal that pushed India closer to China and Russia. I was feeling pretty good, so I went to yoga, which was grueling. After yoga, I still felt good, but I also felt a rumbling in my belly, so I walked to the corner to grab a taco. OK, I grabbed three tacos. And a water. Hydration is important. The day was going so well. But by the time I returned home, showered, changed, and got back to my desk, things had taken a turn. On Slack, I watched in real-time as my colleagues shared the news:

Charlie Kirk had been shot

People on social media were saying he was dead

The AP and NBC News confirmed that Kirk had been killed

Slack went quiet after that and work basically came to a stand still. I turned on the news, but there wasn’t any news — only speculation, rage, grief, wild speculation, scapegoating, calls for civility, scolding, performative grief, spin, pearl-clutching, blame, calls for vengeance, hand-wringing, commercials for drugs that treat conditions I do not have, and a consensus that America was in a dark place and headed somewhere even darker. I turned off the news.

The internet wasn’t much better. Actually, it was worse. I saw all the same stuff that I saw on the news, but with more vitriol and typos. I logged off. Then I wondered if there was any new information, so I logged back on. After a few minutes of fruitless surfing, searching, and scrolling, I realized that it was just the same old misinformation. Also, a troubling question occurred to me: What was fake, and what was real? Technically, that was two questions. Nevertheless, the more I ingested, the more I felt myself becoming lost in the sauce. To paraphrase a prescient New Yorker cartoon, on the internet nobody knows you’re a hallucinating AI-generated dog spewing nonsense. I logged off again.

Eventually, it was time to make dinner. As I often do, I turned on a podcast. As it happened, it was an episode of The Rest is History about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Uplifting.

Actually, no.

But it was grounding, in a way.

One thing I learned about John Wilkes Booth was that he was a mama’s boy. He spent the Civil War talking a big game about the Confederacy. When the news was good, he’d annoy everyone around him by praising the South, the righteousness of its cause (slavery), and the bravery of its soldiers. When the news was bad, Booth drank. At one point, his sister asked him why he hadn’t quit acting and put his own ass on the firing line? Answer: He’d promised his mother he wouldn’t enlist in the Confederate army. Talk about the cowardice of your convictions.

The thing about assassins is that they’re losers. As Dominic Sandbrook, co-host of The Rest is History observed, most of us come to terms with the fact that we won’t make it into the history books, but assassins can’t seem to accept being left out of the history books.

What is undoubtedly true is that John Wilkes Booth feels himself to be a failure and is motivated by a thirst for fame. He says to friends again and again, ‘a man could immortalize himself by killing Lincoln.’ He says, ‘I want to do something that will mean that I’m remembered for all time.’

Mission accomplished, I guess.

The thing about assassinations, however, is that they invite historical counterfactuals. If Serbian nationalists hadn’t assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, would there have been a world war? If Lee Harvey Oswald hadn’t shot JFK, might America have avoided the social and political upheaval of the 1960s? If Booth hadn’t killed Lincoln, might Reconstruction have gone better? The answers to these questions are unknowable. Historians avoid counterfactuals the way vampires run from daylight. Still, we think in stories, and so it’s natural to assume that an assassin’s bullet is capable of ripping a hole in a narrative that might’ve been.

I think that’s one reason why I’ve been a history buff all my life. I’m wary of easy answers, of reductive thinking that says, “but for X, Y would’ve been different.” I’m also wary of alternative history’s myopic cousin: determinism. An economic catastrophe, for example, doesn’t necessarily lead to authoritarianism, although it’s difficult to tell the history of the 1930s without connecting those two things. The point is, what happens today doesn’t dictate what will happen tomorrow. History does not repeat itself, historians like to say, but sometimes it rhymes.

How did abolitionists in 1865 receive the news of Lincoln’s death? I’m sure they were sad, but as Dominic and Tom at The Rest is History podcast point out, abolitionists and radical Republicans weren’t exactly Lincoln fans by that point. Many believed he had taken too long to free the slaves, that he was too conciliatory, too much of a political animal to be counted on to do the right thing. At the time of his assassination, they saw Lincoln as a centrist who would likely go too soft on the South after the war. Some of them even thought Andrew Johnson would be a better vehicle for their Reconstruction agenda. They got that one wrong.

In moments like this, when everyone seems to have a grim take on what comes next for America, it’s good to remember just how bad humans are at predicting the future. It’s also good to remember that people who speak with certitude in these moments often invoke history without bothering to grapple with it. Here’s an un-fun, inconvenient fact I heard from Dan Carlin (if you know, you know) about political violence in America:

In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972 the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American soil, almost five a day. Because they were typically detonated late at night, few caused serious injury, leading to a kind of grudging public acceptance.

Think about that fact the next time you hear a talking head, or an influencer, or some internet take-jockey say something like, the level of political violence we’re seeing in America now is unprecedented, or we haven’t seen this much political violence since the Civil War. Fifty-three years ago, America experienced nearly five bombings per day, on average. In other words, there are people alive today who know, from personal experience, that the talking heads, influencers, and internet take-jockeys are full of shit.

The good news? History will reveal them to be fools.

The bad news? Most of us won’t live long enough to see it.

But here’s what the news won’t say: We have agency. An assassin’s bullet can’t change the course of history because the course of history is only visible in retrospect. History is the residue of the present — a product of our actions (and our apathy), the past tense telling of what we do now.

What comes next?

That’s up to us.

New here?

Drop your email address in the box to receive future editions of Situation Normal. And if you’re a long-time situation normie who wants to support my work (or my taco habit), please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

ICYMI

I chatted with my friend about The Golden Child, then I wrote a post for my other newsletter, Slacker Noir, about the connection between the 1980s Eddie Murphy film and Raymond Chandler. Listen to the conversation here, and read the post here.

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, my novel is based on personal experience, funny as hell, according to many readers “surprisingly insightful.”

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

*The ebook is .99, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Are you listening to The Rest is History, or do you prefer to live in blissful ignorance? No wrong answers.

What happens next? Wrong answers only.

If you’ve read Not Safe for Work, will you please write a review? Authors have mixed feelings about reviews, but I’m told reviews help the people who run e-commerce platforms feel better about themselves. Help them, help me.

Leave a comment

Hi, situation normies!

Two quick announcements.

#1 I’m taking the rest of the summer off

Frankly, it’s too hot to write. Sure, we have air-conditioning, so I could write, but I need a break. Also, I need ice cream, preferably that artisanal full-fat old-fashioned ice cream that runs $81 per scoop, but really, any ice cream will do, unless it’s one of those weird flavors with bits of lobster, or ghost peppers, or Takis. Screw Takis. And seriously, why can’t we stick to 31 flavors? Who knows? Anyway, I’ll be back after Labor Day.

Meantime, if you need something fun to read, grab a copy of Not Safe for Work at Amazon or a non-Amazon store. Spoiler alert: You’ll laugh your ass off.

#2 Situation Normal will get a lot more interesting when I return

Astute situation normies may have noticed that the title / subject line for this post references a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

The thrill of writing Situation Normal is the possibility that you may misunderstand me. I want you to laugh, but I also want you to consider topics you may have ignored or discounted, and maybe even see those topics in new ways. I don’t aim to be consistently funny, rather I’m determined to embrace variable curiosity, i.e. a wide range of topics that don’t fit neatly into a tagline.

Some examples of variable curiosity. Over the past five years, I’ve written about natural disasters and our broken information ecosystem; mental health; middle age; autonomous driving; Nixonland; porn conventions; the federal occupation of Los Angeles; artificial intelligence; the economics of creator economy side hustles; more AI; doppelgängers and the politics of division; apathy, civics, and a total misread of the Clinton-Dole debate; coups & insurrections; and a local crime wave.

Mostly, I’ve tackled these topics by writing comedic personal essays. Going forward, I’m adding long-form journalism and critical essays into the mix. Instead of writing (almost entirely) about me, I’ll be writing more about us, our world, and this combustible moment where everything feels unmoored. As they say in Hollywood: same, but different.

What happens next?

(Mostly) nothing. If you’re subscribed to Situation Normal, you’ll continue to receive emails from me. My publishing schedule might change, because some of the pieces I have in mind will be heavier lifts, but that’s TBD.

If you’re not subscribed to Situation Normal, please fix that immediately👇

Subscribe now

It’ll still be funny, right?

Yes! We need laughter, especially these days.

But it’ll also be serious?

Yes.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Walt Whitman

What about Slacker Noir?

My Substack about crime fiction continues. It rules. You should subscribe.

So, this is just a heads up that things are about to get even better?

See you after Labor Day!

💙

Michael

Sometimes I think the secret to a happy life is the ability to manage cognitive dissonance. I’ll give you an example. Over brunch, a friend tells you they believe the apocalypse is imminent. You agree, not because you want to be polite, or because you’re playing along with a bit, but because you read the news too, and so it’s obvious that humanity is fucked. Believing this, you might skip the egg-white omelet and opt for a full stack of chocolate chip pancakes — if we’re fucked, calories don’t count. Or, you might dine and dash like you’re Ricky Schroder in a very special episode of Silver Spoons — if we’re fucked, there’s no sense paying your bills. Or, if you’re really embracing the apocalypse now scenario, you might order the chocolate chip pancakes, skip out on the bill, steal a motorcycle and a pair of ass-less leather chaps, and go marauding in the wasteland. Point is, you believe there’s no future, and yet you act as if the future matters. This is cognitive dissonance. The ability to manage it is what makes it possible to enjoy brunch, on the one hand, and stomach the news, on the other.

Lately, I’ve been working overtime to manage the cognitive dissonance associated with artificial intelligence. As a writer, I spend an unhealthy amount of time in online writer communities that tend to view everything about AI as unethical and immoral. Half the posts are about how the AI crowd consists of Bond villains bent on stealing everyone’s material, putting us all out of work, and sucking up the Earth’s resources. I (mostly) agree with that sentiment. The rest of the posts are about how writers who use AI, in any way, are class traitors who should fuck off and die, or at the very least refrain from calling themselves writers. I know these posts are written by humans, but I can’t help but notice that, in the aggregate, they commit one of the sins people level at AI writing, namely that it’s cookie-cutter slop. Turns out, originality and voice are difficult for humans and machines. Anyway, I (completely) disagree with the class traitor genre of posts.

On the other side of the cognitive divide there’s the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Here, AI is increasingly ubiquitous, not because it has — or will — live up to Sam Altman’s wildest dreams hype, but because there are countless buggy, not-quite-ready-for-prime-time AI tools providing real utility to real humans who aren’t spending their time raging against the machines. Put another way, you can go full-ostrich on the AI Revolution, and you can scream into the sand that it must stop now, but the world will continue spinning.

When it comes to AI, I have one foot in each camp. My heart is with the idealists, but my head is with the realists. In practical terms, that makes life tricky in the same way that I imagine being an undercover cop is tricky. At work, I am pro-AI. Among my fellow writers, I am anti-AI. Neither one of these identities is core to who I am, but like the undercover cop, my life and livelihood depend on saying the right thing, at the right time, to the right people. More importantly, each situation requires me to believe what I’m saying, even though I contradict myself. And in fact, I do believe that AI is:

Awful / Wonderful

Depressing / Exciting

Over-hyped / Under-rated

Wasteful / Efficient

Destructive / Constructive

I could go on, but you get it. Two conflicting ideas, one human brain, and a buttload of cognitive dissonance. Which brings me to the week that was.

At work, I edited a piece about the AI gender gap. Turns out, men are using AI at higher rates than women, which means women are in danger of falling behind. Unlike the women in the writing communities I belong to, the woman who wrote the piece doesn’t have the luxury of going full-ostrich on AI. Actually, she doesn’t believe any woman has that luxury, regardless of occupation; that’s why she wrote the piece.

While editing that piece, I came across an essay about AI denialists, aka the ostrich crowd. I recognized my peers among the denialists, but perhaps more importantly, I also recognized myself.

Also at work, my boss said they’d reimburse me for subscriptions to Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI tools. Later that day, I used Claude to perform a task that we previously would’ve considered important, but not worth the time. With Claude’s help it took a few minutes instead of a few hours.

In my spare time, I joined my friend , who hosted a group writing session on Zoom. Alex had to skip out in the middle of the session, so he put in charge. Seth put on some music. I wrote my ass off, and at the end of the session, I complimented the music. That’s when Seth dropped a bomb: The music I’d been jamming out to was AI-generated. Seth joked that every writer on Substack would come at me with pitchforks. It was funny because it was true. Sort of.

Also in my spare time, I signed up for a subscription to ElevenLabs, an AI company that specializes in audio. I wanted to try their voice cloning tool. The idea of cloning my voice sounded creepy and strange, but it also sounded cool and (potentially) useful. I’ve always wanted to create audio versions of my stories. In fact, my dream isn’t to publish books, but to produce audiobooks, because audio is my primary way of experiencing fiction and nonfiction. I’ve worked on performing my own books and experimented with hiring voiceover artists. The results haven’t been great. Meanwhile, Substack provides readers who use their app with an AI voice that reads my stories. And of course there are dozens of non-Substack tools that do the same thing. In other words, my stories are already being performed by AI, whether I like it or not.

I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together

To clone my voice, I asked my friend Todd to make a file of me telling him Situation Normal stories for a podcast we did together. ElevenLabs said I needed at least 30 minutes of material; Todd was able to put together 3 hours of me.

It took a few hours for the AI to clone my voice and a few more hours of tinkering to dial it in. Actually, the tinkering continues, but that’s another post. The point is that in a single afternoon, I used an AI tool to produce Clone Michael, who it turns out, does a far better job of reading my stories than I do. I was upset / excited. See: cognitive dissonance. Anyway, this is what Clone Michael sounds like reading a Situation Normal story called “We’re doomed, says the barista.”

I don’t know what will become of Clone Michael. There’s more tinkering ahead and more experiments. My hope is that Clone Michael will walk, run, and eventually fly, where real Michael only managed to crawl. If Clone Michael ends up reading my stories, it’ll be because I believe AI will empower, not replace, me.

But maybe there’s an AI that’s better than Clone Michael. While futzing around on the ElevenLabs website, I noticed that they also offered licensed celebrity voices. Again, I felt like I was looking at something that was creepy / strange / cool / useful. One of those voices was Clone Burt Reynolds. Naturally, I needed to know how Clone Burt Reynolds compared to Clone Michael, so had it read the same story.

As turned out, I liked Clone Burt Reynolds a lot better. Which makes sense. It’s Burt freaking Reynolds! And I guess that’s the point. For all the whiz bang technology that goes into AI, it’s the quality of the inputs that determine the quality of the outputs. As computer programmers say: garbage in, garbage out.

Or maybe not.

Burt Reynolds was better than Clone Burt Reynolds, but Clone Michael was better than me. In other words, the same AI tool made one thing (me) better and another thing (Burt Reynolds) worse. That’s the deal with tools. Fire can keep you warm, and it can burn you; a printing press is equally capable of spreading lies and truth; wheels can bring food to starving people and transport an army bent on starving the people; the internet connects society and breaks it apart. Maybe that’s why I’m torn between the two AI camps. I’m primarily worried / hopeful about people, and far less freaked out / geeked out about tools like AI.

A new project from yours truly: Slacker Noir

I launched a new newsletter called Slacker Noir. It’s a place for me to talk about crime & mystery fiction and share book news, like how I’m making good progress on a sequel to Not Safe for Work. Slacker Noir is free, and true to the slacker ethos, I’ll send out new posts when I get around to it.

Cut Me Some Slack

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, the novel is based on my personal experience, and it’s funny as hell. If you love Situation Normal, there’s a 420 in 69 chance you’ll love Not Safe for Work.

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

*The ebook is .99, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Which AI camp are you in? Hint: Both and neither are acceptable answers.

Egg-white omelet, or chocolate chip pancakes?

🧍🤖?

Burt Reynolds?!

Am I wrong, or am I wrong?

Leave a comment

New here?

Drop your email address in the box to receive future editions of Situation Normal. And if you’re a long-time situation normie who wants to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Usually, our gardener wants to chat about plants. But sometimes Raphael just wants to chat, which great, because I love to chat too, unless I’m on deadline. This week, I wasn’t on deadline, and Raphael had a twofer. We talked about weed treatments, and after we settled that, we dove into the heavy shit.

“Did you know the government is spying on us?” Raphael asked. “I’m listening to Edward Snowden’s book, and I realized, wow, we live in a surveillance state.”

I didn’t have Edward Snowden’s 2019 book, Permanent Record, on my 2025 bingo card, but it’s been a weird year as far as metaphorical bingo cards go. Also, that was besides the point. Whatever you think of Snowden, you’d have to be a dipshit, bootlicker, jingoist, or NSA employee to deny the existence of the surveillance state and its for-profit cousin, the surveillance economy.

“When I was younger and living in El Salvador, my boss warned me not to go to protests because the government takes pictures of the people who are there,” Raphael said. “Later, they use those photos to discredit you, to call you a Communist, or whatever the undesirable thing is. They can ruin your life.”

Historians like to say that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Life in twenty-first century America wasn’t a rerun of life in twentieth century El Salvador, but it rhymed.

“It was harder to do that back then,” I said. “Not nearly as many cameras. No computers. And they had to physically put a tap on your phone. Now, we pay a lot of money to carry around devices in our pockets that spy on us. We tell social media platforms and Google everything about us, and they lease our secrets to the highest bidders. There are cameras everywhere these days. And artificial intelligence makes it possible to sift through information at scale. Plus, Alexa! And I’m pretty sure my thermostat is compromised too.”

I sounded like an ad for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But this wasn’t the first time I’d climbed onto my soap box. I’ve been worried about this shit for decades.

But as it turned out, Raphael didn’t want to discuss surveillance, per se. He was more concerned with what the surveillance state revealed about power in America. The way he saw it, a surveillance state meant that everything was knowable, but not everyone was accountable.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth about this Epstein guy,” Raphael continued. “Too many powerful people are above the law. Maybe they’re guilty, maybe they’re innocent — but we’ll never really know the truth because they have the power and we don’t.”

This was a heavy topic for a Tuesday afternoon in July. For weeks, the Epstein case, the valid but unanswered questions associated with it, the wild conspiracy theories that multiply like Gremlins in the rain, and the dumbest cover-up in the history of dumb cover-ups had swallowed America’s attention the way a black hole swallows light. But this wasn’t about Epstein, not really. Epstein was just the example du jour — an all-purpose meme that signified something rotten in our system. Raphael could’ve just as easily been talking about a Congress that grants its members immunity from insider trading laws, or a Supreme Court that believes in kings but not bodily autonomy, or a President who insists on cutting taxes for the rich, raising taxes on the poor, and financing the difference with debt that future generations, i.e. today’s children, will have to pay.

“You’re right,” I said. “Too many powerful people are above the law.”

“You and me have to obey, but the rich and powerful don’t. That’s not law.”

“Nope.”

“So we’re screwed?”

I could’ve said yes. That would’ve been the easy answer. But I don’t believe in easy answers, and I don’t believe we’re screwed.

“We’re getting screwed,” I said. “Understand the difference?”

He didn’t.

“If we’re screwed, it’s game over. Might as well pack it in, go home, and put that Leonard Cohen song on repeat.”

“But if we’re getting screwed, we still have agency, we can do something about it.”

Raphael laughed. I could tell he thought I was being naive. Maybe I was being naive. Maybe. But the thing about history, aside from the rhyming, is that it’s the product of action. Sure, history is loaded with bastards, shitheads, and evil motherfuckers. But it’s also the story of progress, which is to say, history is the story of regular people using their agency to push back on the bastards, shitheads, and evil motherfuckers who stand in the way of progress.

“It’s like the situation with the weeds,” I said. “If we don’t do anything, what happens?”

“Oh my god, they ruin everything.”

“So we do something about the weeds, right?”

“Yes. But they come back. They always come back.”

“Which is why we never stop.”

A new project from yours truly: Slacker Noir

I launched a new newsletter called Slacker Noir. It’s a place for me to talk about crime & mystery fiction and share book news, like how I’m making good progress on a sequel to Not Safe for Work. Slacker Noir is free, and true to the slacker ethos, I’ll send out new posts when I get around to it.

I wanna read Slacker Noir

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, the novel is based on my personal experience, and it’s funny as hell. If you love Situation Normal, there’s a 420 in 69 chance you’ll love Not Safe for Work.

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

*The ebook is .99, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Are we screwed, or are we getting screwed? Go deep!

What do you talk about with your gardener?

Leonard Cohen’s music bums me out, but I love it. What artists do you love even though their work bums you out?

Who watches the watchers? Asking for society.

Support Situation Normal — You know you’ve been meaning to

Situation Normal is free, but some situation normies pay to support my work & underwrite joy for thousands of readers. If you can, I’d appreciate the support. You’ll get a shout out and all the good vibes you can handle.

Subscribe now

I was sitting at my desk writing a piece for work about how history moves at a tectonic pace, then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, it turns on a dime, when a blast from the past called. It was a former client — a tech firm that once had big plans for artificial intelligence. Their CEO had hired me to ghostwrite some op-eds for him. I wrote two op-eds, got paid, then wrote a third. That was where the situation had gone tits up. My last, and is it turned out, final invoice wasn’t paid. Phone calls, emails, and even dunning smoke signals went unanswered. After months of trying to collect, a few more months of stewing, and then a couple of months working with a witch to put a hex on these deadbeat disruptors, I gave up. I was out $2,000 — my standard rate for an op-ed. That was two years ago.

“We’ve got an invoice from you, but nobody knows what it’s for, and our accounts payable software keeps flagging it. Can you tell me what this is about?”

The caller wasn’t someone I’d met before. He said he was the firm’s founder — a loosey-goosey title in tech that sounds impressive, but actually means jack shit. Nearly all the start-ups I work with have more founders than products. Also, the C-suites at these start-ups often resemble a game of musical chairs. Point is, it didn’t strike me as odd that we’d never met.

“What’s it say on the invoice?” I asked.

“Writing services: op-ed.”

He read me the title. I didn’t remember the piece, but I remembered the unpaid bill. In two decades, I’d only been stiffed three times. The first was a producer who told me, candidly, that he had paid his coke dealer instead of paying me. I told him I understood, as cocaine is a helluva drug. The second time was a humor magazine that folded its print edition after commissioning my piece. They asked if I’d been willing to let then run it on their website, without pay. I told them that was the funniest thing they’d ever come up with. The third time was my former client, Deadbeat Disruptors, LLC.

“Can you tell me who hired you?” the man asked.

I told him. Suddenly, the vibes shifted. I got the feeling that the CEO who had brought me on — a man who was now the former CEO — hadn’t left on the best terms. But their business wasn’t my business. My business was the unpaid invoice.

“Well, we owe you an apology, Michael. I don’t know how this fell through the cracks, but like I said, our accounts payable software kept flagging it, and nobody knew what to do with it, so it ended up on my desk.”

“The buck stops with you.”

He laughed, I didn’t.

“Anyway, I looked at the invoice, and I saw your number, so I figured I’d give you a call and see what this was about.”

My brain exploded — figuratively. My invoice had been kicking around inside Deadbeat Disruptors, LLC for two years. From the sound of it, the mystery invoice had landed on several desks. There must’ve been email chains about my invoice, maybe even a meeting or two, possibly a PowerPoint presentation. But the man I was speaking with was the first person at the company who had picked up the phone. Was that a throwback move to a simpler time, before Slack, automated emails, and vendor payment portals? Sure. But the old-fashioned blower, aka the telephone, had worked! And in record time, no less. Two minutes on the phone with me had solved a two-year running mystery at Deadbeat Disruptors, LLC.

“Thanks for reaching out,” I said.

“Well, I want you to know that I’m wiring the money now. It should hit your bank account in two days.”

“Great.”

“I also want you to know that we started as a small business, just like you.”

“I’m a sole proprietor. The only we in this operation is the royal we.”

I laughed, he didn’t.

“Right, well anyway, I want you to know that I know that two thousand dollars is a lot of money.”

“Not as much as three thousand.”

This time, nobody laughed.

“Anyway, it’s a big deal, and it’s unacceptable. So again, I’m sorry. You should have the money in two days.”

I told him thanks. He promised to introduce me to their new head of marketing & comms. Then he said one last time, “The money will be there in two days.”

Two days later, I checked my bank account. The money wasn’t there. It wasn’t there the next day, either, or the after that, or the following day. So I called the man back. I was all set to give him a piece of my mind, but I never got the chance.

The number had been disconnected.

Keep Situation Normal in good-standing with the Substack Gods

Situation Normal is free, but a handful of situation normies pay so I can keep my Substack bestseller badge, which is in fact, our bestseller badge.

Keep our bestseller badge alive by becoming a paid subscriber to Situation Normal.

A book for people who 💙 this newsletter

I wrote a novel called Not Safe for Work — a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0. Like everything you read here, it’s based on my personal experience, and it’s funny as hell. If you love Situation Normal, there’s an 11 in 10 chance you’ll love Not Safe for Work.

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

*The ebook is .99, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

A new project from yours truly: Slacker Noir

I launched a new newsletter — say that ten times fast. I’m calling it Slacker Noir. It’s a place for me to talk about crime and mystery stories — books, movies, and TV shows. The newest piece is about the noir heart just below the surface of Trading Places, one of my favorite Eddie Murphy movies. Slacker Noir is free, and true to the slacker ethos, I’ll send out new posts when I get around to it. I hope you’ll give it a chance👇

Subscribe to Slacker Noir

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Where’s the money, Lebowski? Make up an excuse for Deadbeat, LLC.

Have you ever been stiffed? Tell your story!

Have you ever stiffed someone? Share your shame.

Do you think I can get a refund from the witch I hired to put a hex on Deadbeat, LLC? They’re still here, but my check isn’t.

Are you going to subscribe to Slacker Noir, or do you hate fun?

Leave a comment

A few months ago, we went to Mexico City. We loved it. The weather was mild, the people were warm, and the tacos were fire. We soaked in the city’s culture, learned about its history, and practiced our Spanish. Our only mistake was coming back to Los Angeles. Which brings me to today’s story.

When we arrived at Mexico City’s Benito Juárez airport, we learned that Aeroméxico, an airline we’d never flown before, had upgraded us to first class for our return flight.

“They must know that I’m a baller and a shot caller,” I told Christina.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, babe, but I think it’s because we paid with our American Express card, and we have a lot of points. Also, this flight is half-empty.”

“Bubble intact, babe. Ballers and shot callers the world over use AMEX.”

After we finished checking in, we did what all ballers and shot callers do and headed for the first-class lounge. I expected champagne and cocaine, but what I found was agua fresca and mediocre WiFi.

“This is bullshit,” I said. “If this is how they treat the elite, I don’t want to know how they treat the peasants.”

“This upgrade is going to your head, babe.”

Christina had a point. Less than an hour ago, I was one of those peasants. All it took was a complimentary agua fresca and mediocre WiFi to turn me into an entitled asshole.

After an hour in the lounge, we went to the gate. Over the PA system, the gate agent announced that they’d be boarding the plane by group, starting with first class. That made me feel like a billion bucks, which is how a million bucks felt before inflation. But the next thing I knew, a mob of economy passengers — eww — rushed the gate.

“We should’ve flown private,” I said.

“We can’t afford private,” Christina said.

“Look at this riff-raff, babe. We can’t afford not to fly private.”

Eventually, we boarded the plane. I took the window seat, Christina took the aisle. She accepted a pre-flight glass of water, because hydration is key. I asked for a glass of champagne, even though I don’t drink, because that’s how ballers and shot callers roll.

As soon as we were in the air, I checked out the menu. It was printed on thick white paper with gold lettering. That was a nice touch the Hoi polloi in steerage would never know about. I ordered the chicken instead of the fish, because I’d seen Airplane! enough times to know that the fish will fuck you up.

Next, I perused my entertainment options. Usually, I watch Argo on international flights, since that’s a movie where the flight home is the finale. But on this flight, I selected Trading Places, because our unexpected upgrade felt like a Billy Ray Valentine situation.

I was watching the scene where Clarence Beeks frames Winthorpe at The Heritage Club and thinking about how I needed to join an exclusive club that wouldn’t have me as a member, when disaster struck. The man in the seat in front of me reclined so far back that he was practically in my lap. I asked him to adjust his seat, but he was already asleep.

“Do you believe this fucking guy?” I asked Christina. “He paid for one first-class seat, now he’s taking two!”

When the flight attendant arrived with my food, I had trouble opening my tray table. The reclined seat in front of me didn’t leave enough room for my table.

“I think his seat must be broken,” I told the flight attendant. “It shouldn’t be able to go back this far.”

She smiled. I thought maybe there was a language barrier, so I tried again in my broken Spanish. This time, I pointed to the seat in front of me. Again, she smiled, then handed me my meal. I ate my chicken ravioli and stewed. Instead of watching Trading Places at a very awkward angle, I fixated on the man’s head and dreamed of his demise.

After two hours of sitting in the world’s most cramped first-class seat, I needed to go to the bathroom. I nudged the seat to see if the man would let me out, but I couldn’t wake him. Somehow, I slithered out of my first-class trap and climbed over the armrest. After I used the bathroom, I performed the same maneuver in reverse.

An hour later, the pilot announced that it was time to prepare for landing. Everyone returned their seat to the full upright position — everyone except for the man in front of me. Eventually, two flight attendants approached the sleeping man. I didn’t know why they needed two people to wake up one man, and I wasn’t sure why they were both smiling from ear to ear, but I didn’t care. That bastard had ruined my upgrade. Gently, they woke him up, and he returned his seat to the full upright position.

After we landed and taxied to our gate, it was time to deplane. I was sitting on three hours of entitled rage, and I was keen to give the fucker in seat 3A a piece of my mind. But as we got off the plane, I noticed something weird. Everyone was smiling at him. Not just smiling. They were oohing and awing over the man. He was taking in stride, as if being envied by strangers was his birthright. He was even handing out glossy eight by ten photos of himself to the flight attendants, pilots, and passengers.

“What a first-class asshole,” I said to Christina. “I need to say something. This dude’s ego is writing checks my body had to cash.”

Christina rolled her eyes, then reminded me that the world’s most cramped first-class seat is a mansion, compared to an economy seat. Once again, she made a good point. But I was still annoyed. As I followed the fucker in seat 3A from the gate to customs, I fantasied about confronting him. I was in the right. Only a first-class asshole could be so clueless and inconsiderate.

As it turned out, I never got my George Costanza moment. But I did figure out why everyone was treating the fucker in seat 3A like royalty. In the thicket of LAX customs, a man and his son who had been sitting across the aisles from us chased him down. It was a brief encounter, but I noticed that father and son were practically giddy. So I channeled my inner Jerry Seinfeld and asked, “What’s the deal with that guy?”

“Do you follow football?” the father asked me.

I knew he meant soccer, and I knew that to call the beautiful game anything other than football, or fútbol, was sacrilege.

“Not really.”

“He’s the most famous Mexican football player ever. He played for Real Madrid. He was my hero when I was his age.”

The man pointed to his son, who looked to be about nine or ten.

“Hugo Sánchez was practically laying in your lap! I wish I’d been in your seat. Everyone on the plane was jealous. You had the best seat on the plane.”

“That’s because he’s a baller and a shot caller,” Christina said.

book for people who 💙 this newsletter

I wrote a novel called Not Safe for Work. Like everything you read here, it’s based on my personal experience and funny as hell. If you love Situation Normal, there’s an 11 in 10 chance you’ll laugh your butt off reading Not Safe for Work — a slacker noir murder mystery set against the backdrop of the porn industry at the dawn of Web 2.0.

Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places.

*The ebook is .99, so you can’t go too far wrong. Just sayin’.

Keep Situation Normal in good-standing with the Substack Gods

Situation Normal is free, but a handful of situation normies pay so I can keep my Substack bestseller badge, which is in fact, our bestseller badge.

Situation Normal is in danger of losing its bestseller badge. Keep the badge alive by becoming a paid subscriber.

IAUA: I ask, you answer

Am I the asshole? Be honest.

Would you have recognized Hugo Sánchez? Lie to me, but make it good!

Have you ever been upgraded? Tell your story.

Will you have the chicken, or the fish? Choose wisely.

What’s your go-to in-flight entertainment?

Leave a comment