ArcaMax

I'm a 66-year-old white man, and I'm more or less retired. I do a little writing, and I do a local news podcast.

Most of my income is pretty much handed to me. I get Social Security. I receive investment income from a nest egg I spent 35 years grubbing up the way a French pig grubs up truffles with his nose. I receive a pension from a ...Read more

Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia. You might want to write that down the way I did before I started this column.

And Jakarta is sinking, or the Java Sea, which surrounds Jakarta, is rising, both of which will have much the same effect on real estate values in the area.

To be exact, both things are happening. Climate change is making the ...Read more

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Gunabama, announced recently that he has no objection to white supremacists serving in the military forces of the United States of America.

"I call them Americans," Tuberville said of our brave Nazis in uniform.

I call them Americans, too, although I usually add another word to the description. "Nutjob Americans." "...Read more

Up here in Massachusetts, where we persist in our bizarre notions of equality, a middle school kid got in trouble for wearing a T-shirt with something on the front that didn't meet the school's standards.

Was it a Marilyn Manson T-shirt? A T-shirt featuring the likeness of some gold-toothed rapper whose last hit was called "I Eat Cops"?

No. ...Read more

If there is one thing I like about Tucker Carlson, it's that he knows how to dress.

White shirt. Striped tie. Blue blazer.

I dress like that myself, and I've always thought my tweeds and khakis sent out the message that I am a solid, well-educated man with some sense of tradition, and that I'm not going to be any trouble at all, no matter ...Read more

Shoot some more cheerleaders! America isn't free yet!

Yeah. That isn't funny.

It's just that I don't take shooting seriously. Not anymore.

In case you missed the start of the joke, some guy in Texas shot two cheerleaders when one of them tried to get in his car because she thought it was her car. He shot the second cheerleader because he ...Read more

Thirty years ago, I only went to the doctor when the newspaper I was working switched health plans and I had to get a new "primary care physician." I'd ask around until one of my friends recommended someone, and I'd call that doctor, and the doctor would make me come in for an examination because he/she drove a Mercedes.

I'd show up with a ...Read more

I can see it now. If former President Donald Trump loses again, or if he wins and gets whapped with the 25th Amendment, the iconography of The Lost Cause, applied so successfully to the Confederacy by Alabama, will be applied to the Trump cause.

As Melania shakes her fist at the sky and swears, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry ...Read more

America is killing itself, and the means we have chosen to complete our suicide are guns and drugs. End of story. Tell the editor it's ready for print.

All right. A little more. I promised the editor around 600 words, and I'll get close to that number no matter how many 9-year-olds die while I'm writing.

But keep that "America wants to die" ...Read more

Former President Donald Trump didn't get arrested today. In celebration, I took out the trash.

I was going downstairs to get the mail, and my wife gave me some trash to take out and reminded me that a half-dozen of my shirts were in the dryer, waiting to come upstairs.

And maybe this is how we've always experienced great historical events. Two...Read more

In the olden times, which my mother remembered very well, near the beginning of the last century, Irish Americans celebrated St. Patrick's Day by going to Mass and wearing a little bit of green, a ribbon on the lapel perhaps.

This was religious and boring.

In response, city governments, beer companies and makers of plastic green derby hats "...Read more

I guess it started when I tried to figure out if smoking weed is liberal or conservative. I don't smoke weed, but it's legal in Massachusetts, where I live. That means it's got to be liberal because Massachusetts is a "liberal commie" state. We're a liberal commie state because we allow abortion, and we don't let you buy 16 automatic weapons the...Read more

Here's another lesson from the really boring frontlines of real, small-time journalism.

Because I don't look good on television, I spent a lot of years toiling for a midsize daily newspaper. Like most dailies of our size, we had a deep and constant commitment to covering politics and its ugly brother, meetings. Every small town in the area ...Read more