by Fred Reed
}these are deranged ramblings, perhaps of psychiatric interest. If pressed, Fred will deny authorship and possibly bring an action for defamation. }beware. These days, not unreasonably I think, people wonder whether artificial intelligence will produce an electronic being superior to, well, us. Others of darker immaaginings ask whether we don’t face the arrival of a …
have a confession to make to my readers. I have been lying about Mexico. Yes. I am a poor sinner and meant no harm, but the devil got into me, and I have done wrong. I have said that Mexico was a pleasant country of agreeable people, and harmless. I have said that children here …
I have decided to run in the upcoming Presidential elections as dictator. I am aware of the stress this will cause me, the long hours, the sacrifice, but I sense that the country yearns for me in its desperation, its despair for a Leader. In this week alone I have gotten hundreds of emails urging …
The Fitty-Sedden Chevy was an American icon, like the flag, Babe Ruth, and McDonald’s. Boys figured that when their time on earth ran out, and they went to the great Southland in the sky, they’d find Elvis and Carl Perkins parked in front of the soda shop in a bad-ass Fitty-Sedden convisible — top down, …
The other day I went up the holler to see Uncle Hant. I figured he could teach me to understand women, because he knows everything. Hant lives in a double-wide with a ’54 Merc on blocks outside, and a fuel-oil tank painted silver, and a three-legged coon dog named Buckshot. A couple of years back, …
‘Tother day late in the afternoon I went down the holler to get Uncle Hant to explain to me about law and order. Hant knows nearly ‘bout everything, more than anyone in West Virginia, even Bluefield. He makes the best shine for three counties, and sells it to yups from Washington. Hant can do pretty …
Censorship in America has reached alarming proportions not seen since the McCarthy era of HUAC. This often isn’t obvious to the public because people don’t miss coverage of stories of whose existence they are unaware. Having spent my working life in the trade, I get information from old colleagues on the frequent stonewalling. For example, …
I reckon I’ve figured out why everybody’s brain in the UnitedStates is getting soft, like grits with too much water in them. It’s because of Star Trek. You know, that space opera about how the world’s worst actors set out to go where no man has gone before and, with any luck, stay there. Scientists …
Websites pour forth heated arguments between liberals and conservative about almost everything—or, as is becoming clear due to brain research, what seem to be arguments but in fact are genetically determined reflexes. Even before the latest results from PET scans and functional MRI, simple observation convinced the sentient that rationality was not involved in political …
Times were strange in 1969. Dan and I had just hitchhiked from Thunder Bay in Canada into the main vein of Berkeley. The early afternoon sun was hot and heat shimmered off parked cars in little squiggles. He had a backpack and I had a duffel bag, containing our lives. We had no idea where …