Grumble Goat

One of the many joyous traditions practiced in this Holiday Season is the exchanging of gifts. Gifts, ultimately, are just things – maybe toys, maybe socks, maybe a Red Ryder Range 200 Shot BB Gun. What makes a gift magical is that it comes wrapped. You are handed a mysterious, shrouded box or bag of clandestine wonder and your only task is to annihilate this thin obfuscation and claim your...

The holiday season is the crashing climax that reverberates through the end of the year. Every holiday is another rite in its own right. Each is unique and celebrates its own distinct facet of human celebration. Halloween celebrates the veil between the living and the dead… and then Christmas decorations come out. Thanksgiving immortalizes the fatal, tragic flaw of harboring conquerors&#8230...

The Harvest is the most important time of the year. Though most of our farming has been given to the machines, humankind is still an agricultural society. All of our major holidays take place during the Harvest Season, which – much to the chagrin of Fox and Friends – is now called the Holiday Season. It is during this time of bounty that we feast. Tables are adorned with overflowing pl...

Humankind is a herd animal. We function best in groups. Thus, by instinct, we crave human connections. ‘Feeling’ may be one of the five senses through which we experience the world, but touching another human is an intimate sensation. A hand shake represents peace and brotherhood. A shoulder grab shows empathy. An innocent brushing of a hand against someone else’s can ignite a fl...

The Earth revolves around the sun in a complacent rhythm. At no point in the history of the universe did the Earth consider one revolution particularly noteworthy compared to another. It is humankind that makes any specific day special. A day of Holly. A holiday is a time that we celebrate life or love or food or festival. It is a moment to break the monotony of endlessly circling the sun. But the...

Humankind’s main advantage is our intelligence. We have conquered the Earth and unlocked the secret Physical Laws of the universe. But in the post-information age, it has become a hindrance. Our minds want to continue to think well after all the thinking has been done. Therefore we need entertainment. Our over-capable minds have unlocked every nuance to entertain ourselves. Watching drama un...

There is a savage side to the human race. There is a carnal obsession forged inside of us that overwhelms our intelligence and unleashes the beast inside. Our great ape ancestors are vegetarian, but somewhere along the line, humanity discovered a taste for flesh. We developed teeth that resemble canine fangs for ripping the juicy, fatty muscle from bone. And in no place is this carnivorous urge mo...

The night is dark and full of terrors. A creaky floorboard in the middle of the night is enough to wake us from peaceful slumber and curse our minds with images of spirits and ne’er-do-wells. A howling wind might remind us that beyond our fragile straw walls the wolves hunt for blood. A black bat fluttering from a black sky might be hunting for flies, but it eludes to the possibility of othe...

Life on our planet is divided into two Kingdoms: Plants and Animals. Basic, simple, and fundamental. In much the same way, our commerce is divided into two types of Purchases: Goods and Services. Goods are self-sufficient and inanimate. Services, on the other hand, are performed by our fellow humans. As a standardized purchase, it makes sense to regulate certain aspects of the service humans&#8217...

Bonus Content! Grumbles happen in the moment. Once the engines of Grumbling have revved up, it’s hard to maintain a steady train of thought. Emotions can override logic and the next thing you know, you’re staring at yourself in the mirror days later thinking: I should have said… But lo, it’s over. Unless you grab the Tin Can and start screaming the should have’s out i...

The human body is the ultimate machine. Able to perform any number of tasks, move on its own, and think critically (in some cases), its no wonder that our skeletal avatars are the model for the ideal robot helper. But, like any machine, it has to go through a periodic reboot. Most reboot maintenance can conveniently take place during the night. Unfortunately, there are times that a system malfunct...

Despite our advanced digital civilization, Humankind are still organic, natural beasts. We must eat and breathe, we must cut our nails and brush our teeth, and we must sleep. From a very young age, we humans know that sleep is good. Babies and teenagers will sleep twelve hours a day. Yet, somehow, sleep has become a shameful thing. Like farting or balding, sleep has been degraded to a shameful par...

Humankind’s domination of the planet has created a population explosion. Unfortunately, the Earth only possesses limited resources. There’s a finite amount of water, a limited supply of oil, and only one Six Flags Magic Mountain. Which means for every human to receive their fair share of Blast Cyclone rides or stale churros, we have to form lines. Nobody likes waiting in line, but it&#...

The world is a messy place. Earth is a chaotic, teeming, moist stew of life, death, decay, and El Ninos. But we humans love order. We thrive on organization and structure. And we love rectangles. The Great Pyramid of Giza is a shrine to the structural perfection of stackable rectangles. Rectangles are neat and tidy, perfect for organization. Our cities are monuments to the sky-scraping rectangles...

As humankind developed, our ancestors decided that different grunts could have different meanings. From language’s humble beginnings, it did not take long before one caveman doubtlessly claimed that his wheel was the better wheel. And, lo, was the birth of advertising. Once constrained by the distance a voice could be carried, advertising grew as powerful as an AM wavelength, a broadcast mar...

Behold! The future is now! Long has humankind dreamed of an age where labor could be performed by automaton. Fields are sowed by the growling colossus of steel oxen. Clothes are sewn by the whirling dervish of Rumbling-Stiltskin. Buildings are erected by hydraulic giraffes, and politicians are elected by algorithmic Gerrymanders. Our bodies are no more than weak lumps of fragile flesh in the face...

Eons ago, somewhere along our long evolutionary line, a creature had sense enough to get out of the ocean. The terrifying depths hold every manner of horrible nightmare: frigid currents, clouded darkness, and flesh-eating monsters both tiny and colossal. Land is a much more peaceful place. And now, in our gratitude to our scaly ancestors, we pay homage to their moist beginnings annually, with a da...

Life is driven by rhythm. There are heartbeats, breaths, and circadian rhythms. And so, collectively, society has rhythms. Like an ant colony with traffic lights, the collective moves with organized beats. Automobiles and pedestrians move at different tempos through the streets, but the rhythm is constant. Until something syncopates that rhythm. The amateur, improvisational jazz musicians of the s...

The new term for ‘Mainstream Popularity,’ is ‘Going Viral.’ The national attention used to be captured by iconic trends that picked up steam and slowly rose to prominence. Pet rocks, the Hula-Hoop, and radioactive karate turtles all grew popular with impromptu playground show-and-tell. But the world has changed. Every child has a handheld brainwash screen that blasts ads di...

At some point along the evolutionary timeline, some creature had sense enough to get out of the water. A quick dip is fun, but living the soggy lifestyle of blobfish isn’t for everyone. Humanity prefers the dry life. An occasional can of corn syrup mixed into carbonated water is all we need of that annoying liquid. Then the summer heat evaporates that oozing wetness like a soggy blanket. Sud...

If all the world is a stage, then it must be the abandoned studio floor of Whose Line is it Anyway. Everybody seems to be improvising and nobody can find the script. On a legitimate theatre stage, everyone knows their blocking, their cues, and their lines. At least, they’re supposed to. The trouble with brains is that there’s no USB slot to transfer data. Brain data-entry is more akin...

Guest Grumbler: Christina Germaine Evolution may have created the intelligent mind and sinuous body that is humankind, but humankind has added its own upgrades. The barefoot, naked cavemen that discovered fire have moved on to inventing clothing, accessories, seasonal apparel, and yes, fashion. Let’s cover those hideous feet, my fashionistas; and let’s do it in style! Conceal that toe...

The Digital Age has led to an explosion of photography. Since we all have our phones in our hand twenty-four hours a day, the photo app has become a second set of eyes. We pay the ‘Cloud’ shamans a monthly tithing to store an amount of pictures that, in the days of film, would’ve had us committed as maniacal hoarders. In such an era, you could logically expect that any given stra...

Food is life. Food is the very foundation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Humans need food multiple times every single day. Humanity has reached an age of plenty, where food is merely the touch of a screen away, and so we forget that this primal urge is tantamount to survival. Instead we both worship and shame this need. The same influencers that model their Instagrams around the idolatry of...

In our fleeting mortality, humans have long dreamed of capturing a moment in time. The long, arduous evolution from cave-paintings through the Renaissance showed our dedication to the idea of capturing epic hunts and grand battles in still images. Then the photographic camera annihilated that thousand year metamorphosis into instantaneous moments truly captured on film. The actual rays of light fr...