When the John Laws collared their suspect in the CEO assassination he was said to have had in his possession a ghost gun, some fake I.D., and a 262-word “manifesto.”
A 262-word manifesto?
By the ghosts of Marx and Engels! That’s what I call phoning it in.
Except our man didn’t use a phone to compose it. Or a laptop. It was handwritten. Whether on papyrus, stone tablets, or a shithouse wall was not made clear.
What is abundantly clear, however, is that 262 words do not a manifesto make. And let me tell you why.
Yes, yes, yes, it’s time for another political-science fiction episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.
• Technical notes: RFD is loving the Ethos mic from Earthworks Audio; Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones; Zoom H5 Handy Recorder; Apple’s GarageBand, and Auphonic for a sonic colonic. “The Internationale (Traditional)” and “The Internationale (Death Metal Edition)” both come from YouTube. The typewriter comes from Freesound. The police siren, screeching tires, ballpoint scribbling, and game-show buzzer all come from Zapsplat. All other evil racket is courtesy of Your Humble Narrator.
Mad Blog Media 
Maybe not a manifesto, but 232 words could make for one baller paragraph. Or a very compelling caption. Or a powerful tweet.
Doesn’t dollar up on the hoof real quick if you’re getting paid by the word, hey? Not even enough to cover that Mickey D’s meal much less bail money and a mouthpiece.
Or evidence in court.
Virginia Woolf’s “A Haunted House” is 710 words. That writing is tighter than a gnat’s ass stretched over a rain barrel. But, critiquing the American corporate health care system only takes eight words. No insurance? No money? Go die somewhere else.
Concise, Paddy me lad. But I think we can edit it down further, since one needs money for insurance.
“No money? Sick? Die.” Four words. Boom goes the dynamite!
Damn editors! Always trying to make space for another ad. 💩
I think I recall you saying the big beneficiaries of this would be the security companies.
O indeed. In the piece I read a large security company said its phones were ringing off the hook, and the tab for total protection for a CEO was a quarter-mil’ per annum.
Meanwhile, CEOs be trippin’. …
Nothing like living in fear. You know, like a teacher.
Because I fell into block printing all of my handwriting due to some technical schooling many moons ago, I sat down awhile back and decided to see if I could still write in cursive. Wow, I forgot how much fun free-flow writing is. But then I decided to have fun and try it with my non-writing hand. That takes a bit more brain power to be effective. And then I decided to make it even more interesting and write in cursive with both hands at the same time. Because my multi-fugue capability is limited, the experienced hand had to wait for the not so experienced hand. It was fascinating. With that experience shared, a 262 word manifesto written in cursive by a non-cursive writer with their non-writing hand could be considered worthy of the effort, especially when done in crayon and on toilet paper.
“Gibberish he says, and then there was gibberish.”
I took up block printing long ago. It was how I added dialogue to the cartoons, and soon it took over entirely.
My earliest journal, from 1974, is written in cursive (and the entries undated, damn it). I can barely remember the version of me that scribbled, scribbled, scribbled that less-than-Gibbonesque bit of history. We’re two entirely different people.
Jeezus POG it’s a wonder you didn’t hang yourself in the shower. But it sounds like ya couldn’t afford the rope and maybe didn’t have a shower in that trailer. Maybe you finally did pull in an FM station and that’s what saved you? Or did you finally score a ride to the taverns? I wonder what a handwriting profiler would say…
Herb old shrink, it was me and two dogs in a 9×40 singlewide at the eastern edge of Greality, Colo., right next to the railroad tracks.
The fucker shook like a detoxing wino every time the Amtrak roared by, but the oil-burning furnace never crapped out unless it was really fuckin’ cold. I woke up one dark morn to an ice floe in the terlet bowl.
Girlfriend from the B-burg had just dumped me, I didn’t know anybody in town, didn’t have a job, stony broke, quit those darned old drugs … hell yes, I was on the edge son!
I had a shower, and I’d’ve had a go at hanging myself in it if I could’ve gotten my feet off the deck without clocking my dome on the ceiling. But I couldn’t, and so the rest, as they say, is history.