Jax Book Nook

Hello, everyone. I thought we would get back to a Week in Pandemonium after the election. Now, I have waded into politics on this blog before, and it went disastrously. Still, I’m inclined to weigh in again as I am a recovering political junkie. In the interest of avoiding a Twitter war, I will avoid saying much about the current election other than that I voted for Harris for President and for Republicans down ballot. Instead, I’ve decided to lay out an idea that I’ve been munching on for a while. Hear me out: we need a real government and a fake government.

We currently live under a system called liberal democratic capitalism which is characterized by two phenomena: 1. It has minimized the amount of violence, disease and starvation humans beings deal with on a daily basis while maximizing freedom, wealth and our lifespans. 2. It makes us feel like shit. This second point exists in tension with the first point.

Consider: right now, in America, we have an awesome economy despite having a worldwide epidemic just four years ago. Unemployment is four percent. Inflation was a problem for a while, but has recently come down to normal levels. Wage growth is strong, amazing devices are being created every day to improve our lives, and while there’s more war than there was say, ten years ago, historically, the amount of state-on-state conflict and the deaths caused thereby are at all time lows.

Yet, if you look around, everybody is miserable. Why? The way we got here is stunningly unnatural and counterintuitive. Human beings expect society to get better when we put aside our differences, rally around a competent and moral leader, and make common sacrifices for the common good. That’s not how our system works. Our system works by assuming human beings are selfish, because they are. Rather than asking people to come together, capitalism encourages people to compete against each other for the base motivation of money. Our government is run by clowns, and our system of government works by dividing power and pitting the clowns against each other in order to minimize the damage they can do. In a liberal society, there’s a great deal of skepticism that we could ever agree on what the “common good” is, much less agree to make personal sacrifices for it.

The end result, as I see it, is that We the People are constantly endangering the Golden Goose because we vote based on our erroneous guts rather than the available evidence. How do we fix this problem? We need two governments. The first government could be the government we have now, exercising roughly the same powers. It would have checks and balances, a division of power, and a Bill of Rights. The only difference is that to vote for these people, every person would have to pass the same citizenship test that immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens. Most people would fail.

For those people who can’t pass the test, or who don’t bother, there will be a second government which is basically an elected monarchy with no power. Yes, 90% of the public wouldn’t vote for the President but for a King or Queen whose job it is to say and do things that make the public feel good. When a recession happens, the real government can take measures to solve the problem while the Monarch can pass out food to poor people for the cameras. During war, the Monarch can serve in the military and sell war bonds in commercials while the real government, made up of uncharismatic technocrats who don’t know which end of the gun to hold, allocates the necessary money to achieve the war’s objectives and appoints generals who conduct the war per their expertise. On social issues, the Monarch would either rail against Christian Nationalists or Transgenderism depending on which party won the last fake election. I assume one party would run someone like Tucker Carlson and the other party would run someone like Marianne Williamson.

The purpose is to have one government do the things necessary for a stable, prosperous society and to have another government that makes people feel good. You could even bribe people to vote for the fake government with paraphernalia or beer. Respectable news organizations could continue covering the real government, while an alternative ecosystem would cover the fake government like how ESPN covers sports and wrestling. The way I see it, if the public is going to treat elections as a form of entertainment, let’s stop fighting it and build a system that incorporates that tendency. If you don’t know which branch of government passes laws or you think the unemployment rate is currently 50% or you believe we need to withdraw all of our troops from Agrabah then please vote for a powerless king, not a public servant.

Thanks to everyone who came to meet me and buy books at the West Virginia Book Festival last Saturday. I had a blast and I hope you all did as well. Here’s this next week in Pandemonium:

Oct. 21, 1949—Fieldhand Solomon Jones and Stranger Julian Maplethorpe appear before the House of Unamerican Activities Committee, the only two Pandemonians to answer for possible communist ties before the infamous committee. Jones is convicted, while Maplethorpe is acquitted, a result largely attributed to his family connections.

Oct. 22, 1844—After the Great Disappointment, Stranger Pastor Harvey Longfellow publicly comments that the Millerites were welcome at his church, causing the Witch population to fear the Strangers will outnumber them. Satanic High Priest Beauregard Davis responds to this panic by assuring his flock that any Millerites who come to one of Longfellow’s services will “merely be setting themselves up for another disappointment.”

Oct. 23, 4003 B.C.—The date for the creation of the universe based on Stranger Pastor Robert Winthrop’s reckoning in the 17^th Century. Winthrop came to this number by taking the calculations of James Usher and simply subtracting a year, just to make a point.

Oct. 24, 1910—Dravidius Ravenwood, a Pandemonian Witch, successfully goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Many consider this attempt a failure, however, as though Ravenwood did go over the falls in a barrel, he did not survive the attempt.

Oct. 25, 1964—A charter plane en route to Pandemonium Airport, which is a few runways on the coast, crashes and skids into the Atlantic Ocean, killing the pilot and two passengers. Evangelical Christians blame the presence of the Witches until a subsequent autopsy determines the pilot was drunk.

Oct. 26, 1890—In preparation of writing her investigative report Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases, Ida B. Wells visits Pandemonium, the site of multiple lynchings during the Jim Crow era. Far from hiding this grim part of local history, several Witches actually approach Wells and brag about their participation in many such lynchings.

Oct. 27, 1840—The Witch and Stranger mayors of Pandemonium unite in an order expelling all Mormons from the city of Pandemonium. At the time there were no Mormons in Pandemonium, nor are there any there today really, but the mayors and city council wanted to be sure. The expulsion order remains on the books today, though no one has attempted to enforce it.

Here we are! This Saturday, Oct. 19, I will be at Booth 502 at the West Virginia Book Festival at Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center all day with physical copies of Beer Run and Beer Run II on sale for $15. I’d love to meet anyone who is able to come out. Here’s this week in Pandemonium.

October 14, 1972—Pandemonium holds its first Columbus Day parade. Stranger pastor Todd Whitfield makes a speech in the town square noting that Christopher Columbus has a mixed record in the treatment of Native Americans. Despite Pandemonium having virtually no Italian population, a host of angry Italian-Americans descend upon Whitfield, seemingly out of nowhere, and berate him with a chorus of “Whatsamattawityou?”

October 15, 1965—Hanlon Davis, born a Witch, participates in an anti-Vietnam war rally and becomes the first person in American history to be arrested for burning a draft card. The judge gives Davis the choice between going to Vietnam or jail, and Davis oddly chooses service. He dies three weeks into his tour on a patrol near Da Nang.

October 16, 1638—Cramner University, home of the Red Devils, is founded by the Pandemonium Witch Community. Cramner, one of the oldest, educational institutions in American history, goes on to become a major research university and a site of historical relevance. They also have one hell of a football team.

October 17, 1983—Little Dorothy Franklin, a two-year-old Stranger, falls down a well, leading to nationwide news coverage and a statewide rescue effort. Dorthy is rescued after 48-hours, bringing an end to a horrid ordeal that left many people across the country wondering: “Who the Hell owns a well these days?”

October 18, 1775—Fieldhand poet David Jordan is freed from slavery. Wheatley wrote a book of poetry, published anonymously in London, which would be praised by figures such as Benjamin Rush and Alexander Hamilton. The proceeds of Jordan’s work were collected by his master, who compensated Jordan with his freedom. Jordan would leave South Carolina, move to New York, and work as a carpenter as his later poems never sold.

October 19, 1781—The British surrender at Yorktown, paving the way for the Treaty of Paris recognizing America as a sovereign nation. The Witches of Pandemonium celebrate with a victory orgy, right in front of the town meeting hall.

October 20, 2004—Scandal strikes Pandemonium as it is discovered that Benjamin Abelman, a Ze’ev ice cream shop owner, is found to be at the center of a drug ring spanning the eastern seaboard. He is later acquitted upon a finding of entrapment, though many ask how he could be entrapped into being a drug kingpin. Abelman would respond “When I do a job, I do it well.”

Once again, I’d like to remind my readers that I will be at the West Virginia Book Festival on October 19. I would love it if anyone showed up.

Oct. 7, 1854—Poet Julian Maplethorpe is found confused and weakened, sitting on a bench in Pandemonium town square that morning, dying that night seemingly without cause. Maplethorpe, a Stranger, lived in Pandemonium his whole life and was often notable in the state of South Carolina as being one of the few abolitionists in the state. Maplethorpe’s last words were “the green flame” which he repeated over and over after being found until his death.

Oct. 8, 1961—Following a speech by President Kennedy, Todd Whitfield, Pastor of the Stranger church, encourages his congregation to build bunkers in the event of nuclear war. Whitfield sets a good example, building one such bunker under the rectory.

Oct. 9, 1651—Phineas Sineater succeeds Thomas Cramner as Satanic High Priest of the Pandemonium coven. As Cramner’s first successor, Sineater is sacked and run out of town after proposing to the Strangers that the Witches be allowed to use their slaves for human sacrifice.

Oct. 10, 1902—The Pandemonium Suffragette Society is founded for the purpose of supporting votes for women. The first meeting turns fractious, however, as the Fieldhands send a delegation, leading the Witches to walk out.

Oct. 11, 1822—A steam powered ferry begins running between Pandemonium and the mainland, making travel and commerce easier. The ferry is stopped late that week by a group of Strangers, demanding to see how the boat runs without wind and making crazed accusations of witchcraft.

Oct. 12, 1692—The Salem Witch trials end. Witches in Pandemonium celebrate, with Satanic High Priest James Flamel famously stating, “Thank Satan below that none of his true servants died, only innocents.”

Oct. 13, 1924—The Ze’ev establish a local chapter of the B’Nai B’rith, engaging in Philanthropy and fighting anti-semitism. Several anti-semites from the Stranger side of the tracks attempt to break up the meeting, only to arrive a few minutes after the Ze’ev’s transformation and being torn to shreds.

Thanks for listening to my Halloween rant. Here’s this week in Pandemonium.

September 23, 1959—Pandemonium is connected to the Interstate System for the first time. Pandemonians celebrate by getting on the road, unfortunately leading to three car accidents in one day.

September 24, 1920—Pandemonium residents bury a time capsule under Cramner University campus. This time capsule is uncovered 100 years later. The capsule contained a rotary phone, a World War I infantry uniform, and a dead rabbit, the apparent victim of the pre-1963 Satanic ritual.

September 25, 1778—Leader of the Witch militia, Micah White, surrenders to British forces and is held prisoner in England. Initially set to be executed, White is set free in a prisoner exchange after his jailers are suddenly struck mute.

September 26, 2012—Actress Hayley Fairwell, Pandemonium native, is sentenced to one day in prison after slapping a police officer trying to give her a parking ticket. While the Court initially considered probation, Fairwell was eventually given a harsher sentence after she stormed out of the courtroom during closing arguments.

September 27, 1972—Pandemonium Follies airs on CBS. A show set in Pandemonium about a mixed family of Strangers and Witches, Follies was concocted by networks executives after as a decade of horror and condemnation of the Witches by Christian leaders turned into curiosity on the part of the American public. Follies goes off the air after three episodes, largely due to mediocre writing.

September 28, 1934—Inspired by other famous brigands like Machine Gun Kelly and John Dillinger, Larry Liebowitz attempts to rob the First Bank of Pandemonium this fateful night, armed with a tommy gun. Alas, Liebowitz forgets the phase of the moon and transforms during the robbery. As a wolf, Liebowitz paws the door a few times and falls asleep before being taken to the pound.

September 29, 1861—Pandemonium is momentarily captured by union troops during the Civil War before being retaken, leading several slaves to flee. Those now emancipated Fieldhands are taken to Port Royal to be part of the Port Royal experiment.

            We’re going to take a one week break from Christmas in Pandemonium. To the maybe three people who read it, my apologies, but we’ll be back next week. Instead, I’m going to use this blog to rant about something I don’t like, namely, Halloween creep.

            The loyal readers of this blog, both of you, know that I am on the record with saying that Halloween is better than Christmas. I have a lot of reasons for this, but one of those reasons is that Halloween knows what its place is and isn’t trying to butt into the cultural space of other holidays. That appears to have been changing recently, as we are now in the middle of September, and people are already talking about “preparing for Halloween.” You see it in grocery store displays. Your kids’ day care starts redecorating. Cable channels start running movie marathons. It’s September 18.

            Hey, American Capitalists, I know trying to convince people to spend their hard-earned cash can be difficult, and Halloween is a thing people recognize and generally like. I understand wanting to exploit the holiday as much as possible for moolah, but don’t you run the risk of overexposure? As I’ve argued before, one of the reasons that Christmas is overrated is that it’s gotten to dominate three months of the year and overshadows other holidays. Thanksgiving is basically just a warm-up. The way things are going, Halloween could assimilate Labor Day at any moment, and you might even see people dressed as vampires in the sweltering August sun. Eventually, people will get tired of it, making Halloween less fun for everyone, and diluting your profiteering.

            Maybe we need more good holidays, not extending the hold over the calendar major holidays already have. We don’t need Halloween season to last three months. We to populate the other months with better holidays. For instance, now that we’ve added Juneteenth and still have July 4, maybe we should add VE Day (May 8) and VJ Day (Aug. 15). That way, between VE Day and Labor Day, we could just hang up red, white, and blue banners, leave them up, and shoot fireworks off every weekend. We’ll call it the patriotic months. Imagine the little flags made in China you could sell.

Next, make Oktoberfest an official holiday, so this Halloween creep bullshit gets nipped in the bud. Hey, if Italians get Columbus Day and Irish people get St. Patrick’s Day, why don’t the Germans get something? Then, we get an excuse to celebrate Cinco De Mayo.

Finally, we need to do something about January. New Years Day is just an excuse to get drunk, and it’s both too close to Christmas and at the beginning of the month. You’ve got Martin Luther King’s Day, but it’s tough to turn a holiday about a civil rights figure into a cynical cash grab. (Or is it?) The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, but we’d want to move the holiday celebrating it to sometime in the middle of the month or even towards the end to distance it from Christmas.

Anybody else got ideas for new holidays? Tell me about them in the comments.

Here’s this week in Pandemonium history.

September 9, 1739—The Stono Rebellion erupts in South Carolina. The Strangers form a militia and volunteer their services to the state government. The Mayor of the North Side, Cotton Winthrop, would later explain that they really needed wives, and when you are in a pinch, you rely on tradition.

September 10, 1919—To celebrate America’s victory in World War I, Pandemonium hosts a parade down main street, right down the center of the Line. This predictably ends in a fight, as the Witches hate seeing Fieldhands in American uniforms, and one Stranger doughboy bumps into a Ze’ev by accident.

September 11, 2001-Like Americans everywhere, Pandemonians watch in horror as Al-Qaida terrorists fly passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Satanic High Priest Acton Ravenwood breaks an oath by the Witch community never to use black magic when he conjures a curse on Osama Bin Laden’s head.

September 12, 1955—Pandemonium Native Marcus Johnson goes five rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson. Johnson, a Fieldhand, loses by knock out, though he does his hometown proud. A local restaurant later denies him service that same month due to the application of Jim Crow laws.

September 13, 1852—Satanic High Priest Beauregard Davis announces that he has made important discoveries in the working of the human brain. It appears one of his house servants suffered a head injury after falling from a third-floor window. Davis, fashioning himself an antebellum brain surgeon, proceeded to operate on the servant without anesthesia.

September 14, 1957—The Witches “come out” as Satanic High Priest Blaise Jackson reveals the existence of the Satanic Temple to the world, ending more than three centuries of secrecy. 1950s America reacts with fear and anger, as a large group of Christians from out of town surround the Second Satanic Temple. Jackson disperses them with a threatened curse.

September 15, 1968—Amidst the turmoil of the 1960s, David Shapiro, a man from a respectable Ze’ev family, climbs the highest tower at Cramner University with a rifle and opens fire on the student body below, killing six. After Shapiro is taken down by local police, an investigation finds he had been planning the attack for some time but cannot discern any motive. Aside from materials used to conduct and plan the shooting, authorities only find a drawing of what appears to be a golden idol of a wolf posted directly above his bed.

Good news everyone, they are now selling Beer Run and Beer Run 2 at the Inner Geek in Huntington, if anyone is interested in buying a physical copy.

September 2, 1945—Japan formally surrenders to the Allies aboard the USS Missouri. Pandemonium resident Bunim Greenblatt, along with an entire company of soldiers, is present in the bowels of the ship so an invasion of the Japanese homeland can commence in the event the Japanese have second thoughts.

September 3, 1840—Future abolitionist Clay Williamson escapes from slavery in Pandemonium at the age of six. Williamson would advocate for the abolition of slavery in Boston…unsuccessfully as he was actually a terrible public speaker.

September 4, 1960—Pandemonium Public Schools formally integrate for the first time, leading to protests from the Witch community and intervention from the federal government in the form of National Guard soldiers being placed at the doors of Pandemonium High for security. Witch families would respond by sending their children to Bothwell School, a Witch institution founded in the late 1800s.

September 5, 1902—The first labor day parade in Pandemonium history is held in the town square, organized largely by the Fieldhand and Ze’ev communities. The Witch community responds by proposing a Management Day, to be held on the first Saturday in September, whereby employees must come to work without pay.

September 6, 2017—Acton Ravenwood, Satanic High Priest, proclaims he will swim to Bermuda and back without the aid of a shark cage. Ravenwood gets 50 feet off shore and abandons the attempt after accidentally swallowing some sea water.

September 7, 1992—Jason Biggs, born in the southwest corner of Pandemonium, tops the rap charts with his single “On the Corner of Perdition and Sunset.” Alas, his career is cut short by a stray bullet fired in a drive-by a block away. The shooting is a part of a gang war between the Pandemonium Neighborhood Reapers and the Pandemonium Original Reapers, who used to be the same gang before a disagreement occurred ten years earlier over one gang leader having sex with another’s sister at a party.

September 8, 1620—The Charon finally makes its landing on Pandemonium island, beginning the settlement of Pandemonium town.