OL turns 13 today, my friends. By the Lords of Kobol, the Elder Ones beyond Comprehension, and Jesus titty-fucking Christ himself, I can’t believe it. Thirteen fucking years in this madhouse. It has been, as the title suggests, a constant companion of mine at this point. It’s born friendships, feuds, interviews, Twitch streams, and various off-shoots communities such as our Instagram, Facebook, and Discord.

More than anything, it’s given myself and others a little Oasis in the middle of the maelstrom that is The Online World these days. A bastion of banality and congeniality, if you will. As I usually do when we hit some benchmark, I want to shout out everyone who has ever written for OL, hung out on OL, promoted OL, or even slandered us in the dark, hate-slickened halls of their own impropriety.

Where we at existentially at the moment? Well, the summer is drawing down, the school year is looming (why the fuck did I say I’d teach five classes?), and the Most Righteous Time of the Year is almost here. Football! Halloween! Apple cider donuts! The rejoicing upon the Eternal Finality of the Year and the Spirits it unleashes!

But I still got three-weeks or so to revel in my own crumb-covered lethargy as a full-time maniac and a part-time house husband! Here’s what’s capturing my attention this week.

This is Monday Morning Commute, baby!

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A monarch on a dying planet.

The impermanence of culture on the internet.

A neighbor’s dog in a dying body.

The impermanence of one’s own memory on the internet.

A fleeting thought connecting all of these on a dying strand of consciousness.

There was a column I had intended on writing that would tie together these disparate thoughts. In fact, I had intended to string them along clumsily in this week’s Monday Morning Commute. Heavy-handedly sort them into an array, sewn together with some half-baked idea about living under the Sword of Damocles. The monarch blooming in our garden, despite things in motion to ensure its extinction. Contemplating the existence of OL, amid the slow heat death of blogs and websites. My neighbor’s dog happily looking to me for affection, unknowing of its own body harboring cancer. Myself trying to understand my own evolution through the rummaging of posts here, not wanting to relinquish my own Archive in order to transition to a different medium.

But clearly, I didn’t. But clearly, I haven’t. Not outside of some sort of meta-reflection on their potential connections.

Sometimes the words don’t come. Sometimes the words come but you don’t want to utter them. To cast them into the Ether, for judgment, for evaluation, for to speak them makes them real. To comment on the butterfly, or the dog, or my own history is to ensure their reality. Their death sentence.

Sometimes it’s just too much, and that’s okay.

Tangentially, it reminds me of PKD’s quote about the sentence that can destroy you. About the certainty that you will hear it, but also the fact that another “sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you” and maybe this week let’s just focus on that.

Be that sentence to someone this week. There is this notion that kindness is weakness, that softness is frailty. However, I think there’s strength in the move that opens up your own heart to someone. To speak the second sentence, you must accept the vulnerability that comes from uttering the kindness. Paradoxically, the softness at your center is only expressed through strength.

Destruction is easy, its as simple as clapping your hands.

Obliteration is easy, its as simple as closing your eyes and swinging.

It requires only the reptile at the core of your meat-processor to gnash alive.

For this week let’s admire the monarch. Let’s pet the dog. Let’s simply accept the waves of entropy and times that usher us along. Let’s deal with it by sharing the second sentence.

This is Monday Morning Commute.

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Gus Fring! Doing Gus Fring shit! This season on Better Call Saul!

After the jump, because we live in a horrible world where companies post fucking trailers on Twitter.

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Better Call Saul Season 4 is coming, folks.  The announcement by AMC ProgrammingCzars reminds me that the show, in fact, exists. Furthermore, it reminds me that I should probably be watching said show. Any of you folks fuck with it? Should I be watching it?

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Here’s my yearly reminder that I should be watching Better Call Saul. But, you know, instead I’m probably watching Contagion for the thousandth time or something.

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I have not watched Better Call Saul, yet. I should though, because Bob Odenkirk is fucking fantastic. Are you watching it? Are you excited for the second season?

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It is officially the fucking doldrums, yo. The Prole Bowl has come and gone (The Lords of Kobol are kind to me), and now darkness descends upon my sad, empty life. Oh sure I could stare even further into the Abyss what, with the White Noise of sports-based distraction shuffling back into the Miasma. But who wants that? Not this bro.

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Don’t make Mike Ehrmantraut angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. #LazyText #ImTired

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Better Call Your Friends and tell them to keep February 8 open! #LOL#SHITTYTITLEPUNS#IMWORTHLESS You see, that’s the night Better Call Saul is premiering. You know, the Breaking Bad spin-off no one asked for, and everyone is cautiously optimistic about.

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Yes. AMC has unveiled a pretty catchy music video to promote Better Call Saul. BETTER CALL THE LOCAL PRIEST, THERE’S AN UNHOLY AMOUNT OF DANCING GOING ON. Just try and stop these disjointed, seemingly unconnected pelvic gyrations of mine. I dare you.

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