Grumble Goat

Humankind has risen far above the nasty marshes and bubbling swamps of our natural beginnings. We have created order and society and cleanliness. And pleasant smells. Nature, on the other hand, is smelly. Our own bodies disgust us with their odors. So we made fragrant soaps and deodorants and eau de toilette. We created Time-Release-air-Fresheners and Bubblegum Vapes. But we still need our crops t...

Welcome to the Future. We are now past the Information Age. Not only because mis-information has taken over, but also because we have been surpassed. It was fun living in the Now, but we can no longer keep up. Language-Learning Artificial Slop is the new reality and make-believe productivity is moving faster than we can blink; yet meanwhile, our lives are a hectic chaos of never-ending tasks and c...

Humankind is a herding species. We thrive when we work in groups. Alone, a person would have to build their own shelter, forage their own food, sew their own clothes, and create their own streaming platform while writing and producing their own bingeworthy content. But together, we can spread that work around. The drawback is that if you didn’t build your own roller-coaster, then you have to...

We live in the computer age. Everything is computer. Communication happens through our instant messaging, banking happens through the ATM, groceries are ordered via app, and applying for jobs is HR portals. Gone are the days of firm handshakes and human interaction. Though, there remains one hospitable refuge. There exists one business model that pairs a live liaison with each human guest. When yo...

What was once spread-out nomadic tribes, Humankind has transformed into overpopulated, sky-scraping mega-metropolises. Progress has created super-city-states of civilization that clump humans together almost as tightly as explorers in OceanGate’s Titan Submersible. And with such a dense population, we create waste. While the computer-age technology has created a much brighter Times Square an...

Humankind has developed an obsessive encyclopedia of rules, ordinances, and law. We thrive in discipline and orderliness. Laws dictate where we can go, how we behave, and exactly how inebriated we can be driving home. But we are also beholden to our nature. And the one Law of Nature is ‘Kill, or be Killed!’ But when we are good boys and girls, how can we scratch that killer itch? Tune...

Humankind loves systems and order. We obsessively name and categorize everything in nature. We divided all of the branches of life into Species and Genus and Kingdoms. We plotted every element in the universe into a table of contents. We put the square block in the square hole. And in our kitchens, we stack the plates with the plates and the bowls with the bowls. Forks go on other forks and spoon...

Healthcare is a vital part of our society. Just like access to food and water, healthcare is a necessary part of maintaining these fleshy avatars we call bodies. While hospitals and medical access may be a wildly mismanaged, robber-baron industry of government-sponsored organized crime, most of our healthcare starts at the home. Staying hydrated and choking down brussel sprouts is basic health mai...

Humankind is a product of nature, and thus we are beholden to nature. Despite living in a world of caller-ID and screening-calls, when Nature calls we must answer. And that answer happens the same, every time. We use the toilet; a toilet that is has a pretty universally recognized shape and function. Everybody uses this apparatus multiple times a day, and so we must all be exceptionally well-verse...

We mark a new year on the calendar.  Like a barbarian whipping a flail around its chain, so too does the Earth whip around the sun to clobber us with the passage of time.  And time, like the orbital momentums we attribute it to, can be cyclical.  While its nice to take the New Year as an exercise in imagining a future unwritten, sometimes our propulsion is backward.  It is one thing to reminisce a...

There is something deeply elemental about doors. Something lurks in our minds, possibly from our days living in caves, that profoundly impacts the way humankind’s subconscious reacts to doorways. ‘Opening Doors’ is metaphorically equivalent to obtaining opportunities. What prizes await behind Door Number Two? ‘Making an Entrance’ is to become the center of attention....

In this futuristic age, it is easy to forget that we are mortal. Humanity has become nearly all-powerful… we can summon the visage of someone in another realm on our magic mirrors regardless the distance; we can portend the future through the crystal ball of our Accuweather Apps; and we can séance the guidance of the non-living through Grok. But we are still beholden to the curses of our fle...

As Autumn sets in once again, humanity must face the eternal questions of decay that haunt the bare branches and long shadows of Hallow’s Eve. Life is full of Grumbles, as this podcast attests; but so then is the ever-present awareness of mortality. As the spiritual veil pulls back, now is the time to question that infinite darkness of the beyond. But which is the more haunting idea: to cros...

The meaning of life is a question that has plagued philosophers since the dawn of time. Some say love, or laughter, maybe presence of mind, even the number 42 may hold the answer; but the question persists. Except in a scientific sense. The whole purpose of life in a scientific sense is to procreate. The proliferation of life is the purpose of life. This, very simply, means that we must pair off....

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 o...

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-tra...

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 o...

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...

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...

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 conve...

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 th...

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...

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 pro...

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...

Descartes argues that the only thing I can be sure of with certainty is that my consciousness exists. Everything else is built on trust. We take for granted that we know everyone in our lives exists and our relation to them is built on foundations of truth. Except for one day a year. There is a day in the calendar that puts us in a Truman Show of our own. We can trust nothing that comes out of peo...