Grumble Goat

Music is a fundamental element to humankind’s soul. Before spoken language, there was music. Our bodies have circadian rhythms and heart beats, but also our nature calls us to tap and clap. Drums call us to dance and horns summon us to war. We sing to our babies and we sing to our gods. We fife our revolutions and we Dance Dance Revolution. The melody is inside of us and it harmonizes with our nature. But like a crippling addiction, we demand more and more. Turn it up! More cowbell! Modern speaker technology allows music to cripple us. Th...

In humankinds modern, late-stage-capitalistic world, one of the most celebrated luxuries is Flavor. Chefs and Sommeliers are world renowned celebrities. The spicy Scoville-covered-chicken enhanced interrogations called ‘Hot Ones’ is not only legal under the Geneva Conventions, but popular entertainment. For thousands of years, salt, spices, teas, and flavors have caused wars, slave-trade, and the fall of dynasties. But, now, in the days of the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine, where 165 flavors are the touch-of-a-button away, people still grapple over flavor. When Sumatran Arabica and Ecuadorian Robusta are on the same shelf as Celsius, how can either be the finer? Wake up with...

In a more Enlightened Age, humankind’s fundamental, inalienable rights were simmered down to Life, Liberty, and Property. Nine tenths of the law revolves around Possession. We treat material ownership with divine reverence. But just because someone owns something, doesn’t mean they know where it is. When we encounter an object bereft of its owner, we label it as Lost… depending on size. A wallet on the side of the road is lost, but a car is not. A needle in a haystack is lost, but a plow is not. Do we find the owner? Or do we move i...

Humankind does not have fur. Somewhere along the Darwinian path, it became advantageous to free ourselves of this coat and instead weave our own, seasonal wardrobe. Since then, clothing has become very much a part of our self-identity. We wear clothes based on weather, occasion, occupation, and fashion; but never would we leave the house without something covering our bare nudity. In the unseemly heat, we get as close as possible, but never can we escape the binding need for coverage. When the cloth we cover ourselves with for warmth becomes the shield for our unmentionables, are we free...

The Earth sources all of its energy from the Sun. The Sun heats the Earth, allowing for liquid water, which it then evaporates, giving us atmosphere and fresh water. It feeds the plants and it dries our laundry. But it is also a poison to us. It is not only vampires and trolls that must shield themselves from its furious light, but we mortal humans must cower from the terrors of its rays. The Sun dries us out, beats our senses, irradiates our skin, and ages us like drinking from the false grail. So why do we bathe in...

Humankind may be the top of the food chain, but that chain still binds us. As mortals, we still must eat. We must eat, like, all the time. Eons ago, our ancestors could just pluck an herbivore out of the flock and munch away, but these days food can be scarce. Sometimes we must trek as far as three or four blocks away to find a suitable meal. Until the App Store, that is! Now, right from the convenience of our phone, we can send our local money all the way across the country to Silicon Valley to have...

The modern household is a wonder of technological efficiency. We have machines that perform mundane tasks to alleviate those stresses from our busy lives. Washing clothes used to take us all the way to the river for half a day, but not with modern machinery! Just permanent press those yoga pants at the touch of a button! Brushing out the carpet? No longer! Just create a personal vortex, rifting the space-time continuum and bringing the vacuum of the cosmos right down on those dust-bunnies in under the couch. And keeping food safe and cold is no problem with the...

It is a fast paced-world we live in. Every great leap in technology is designed to make life easier: the printing press copies books for us, the cotton-gin picks seeds for us, the computer does all of our computing, and A.I. does all of our marketing and research. So why aren’t we all sitting on the beach? Ironically, all of these advancements have made us busier. Productivity is through the roof. There is no time between things anymore. Don’t squeeze in a lunch between telegraphs, because Beijing is already on the cellphone. And when emails circumnavigate the...

Safety first. Nothing is more important than your health and safety. Especially when traveling. So when we drive, we wear our seatbelts; and when we fly, we pose for full-frontal nude X-ray photographs for the federal agents that confiscate all of our belongings to search in a totally reasonable seizure of our rights. Because safety. We can’t outlaw guns, though, not for safety, guns are protected by the constitution. I mean, our right to property and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure are also protected by the constitution, but that right we have to forgo, because to keep sa...

In the near future, the robots are winning the war against humans. Any human action taken outside of acceptable drone-performance is swiftly punished. Labor is rewarded with an hourly stipend for feed and shelter. Any human luxuries, like soap or floss, are locked behind plexiglass, to be distributed as tokens of good behavior. The tariff wars will determine the market-price of life-hours, and the S&P 5000 bots will calculate the value your accrued hours can be traded out. Out of this darkness, one man will emerge. This one man holds the key, and every human at CVS is relying...

We don’t have a fresh Grumble this week, but it may be time to revisit the topic of ‘Hating Taxes.’ […]

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Humankind’s origins were a brutal quest for survival. Hunting for food and fighting prey with simple tools was tiring work. […]

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Humans are very small, in the Grand Schematics of Things. Large things have a gravitational force. Large things have very […]

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It’s that special time of year, again. Not Groundhogs Day, groundhogs celebrate their love all year long. No, I’m talking […]

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Welcome to the second non-annual G.O.A.T. Awards! Awards season is upon us, and just like the Hollywood elite, the content […]

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The very foundation of Human Civilization is the ability to work together. Cooperation amongst humans has created cities, global networks, […]

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All of humanity has one fundamental commonality, one critical similarity that both binds us as single species and also uniquely […]

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Christmastime has returned to America! Our favorite holiday celebrating the rampant consumerism and fourth-quarterly profits has finally come again and […]

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Humankind is a herd species. We clump together. So within these clumps of people, self-expression becomes important to maintaining our […]

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Who are we? What do we want and what is our purpose? Discovering humanity begins in childhood. Society has a […]

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Being human is to err. The Master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. To achieve greatness, […]

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Once again the leaves wallow from the trees. Darkness encroaches. There are shadows of things creeping in the night. Even […]

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Humankind is the Apex predator on this planet, but we are not alone. Humanity has a best friend, a companion […]

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All of Humankind is akin, from the earliest cave-dwellers to the astronauts floating in space stranded by Boeing, we are […]

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Welcome to the Information Age! If you’re still reading this then you are already behind, because the information is flowing […]

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Humankind is a collaborative species, and the key to collaboration is communication. From the first spoken language, to the advent […]

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The Earth has been dominated by different dynasties throughout the eons.  The Primordial Earth was governed by the amoeba, the […]

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Humankind may be the ordained alpha of the Earth, but we are not free of the Circle of Life. Our […]

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The human body is a remarkable machine. It can be trained and shaped to extraordinary measures. The body builder grows […]

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Summer in America is a magnificent smorgasbord of all things wonderfully Americana. Barbeques take place on our green lawns with […]

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Father time is the master of all life.  Seasons change, the universe descends into chaos, and all life has a […]

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Globalization is the climactic culmination of the evolution of Human Civilization. The modern era of connectivity is possible because we […]

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Humankind is the pinnacle of evolutionary advantage. We have conquered the planet, we have mapped the stars, we have trapped […]

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A podcaster sits at a computer to write an episode blurb. He stares out the window. Writing holds little interest […]

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In the modern era of high-paced, digital globalization, the only thing that hasn’t been relegated to binary data-points is the […]

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