On the Death of My Father - January 2, 2024

There will be no more car magazines.

Of course, there will be. In some form. But nobody will erase the car pictures and redraw them. We’ll never know what a Cybertruck would look like with a rumble seat and fins. We’ll never see a Volkswagen Beetle SUV or an electric Studebaker minivan.

There will be no more children’s books.

Of course there will be, but they won’t be like the ones he wrote for his grandchildren. There will be no more William Walden Wilde or Roy N Renta. Merlin Minos Mot cast his last spell. Piffle Poffle baked his last waffle. And N.E. Wair is nowhere.

There will be no more English professors. No more Moby Dick or Hester Prynne or Walden Pond. Young Goodman Brown resides in Hell. Billy Budd hangs from the gallows. All the world’s diaries are on fire.

Let them burn.

Never again will someone give me feedback on my writing. Not like him. Yes, they will point out flaws I missed; they will encourage me with praise and sadden me with disappointment.

But he could upend everything with a few words. When I sent him a draft, I’d set aside two weeks because I knew any negative feedback would make me stop writing that long.

When he was in the hospital last, he’d asked me to read him my novel. I hate that novel. Four years. Fuck that thing. But he asked, so I read it to him as he moved in and out of his delirium. I thought he’d fallen asleep. I wouldn’t have blamed him. But he turned to me and whispered one word.

“Better.”

He said “better,” and it really was.

No one else could do that. No one else ever will again.

I’m sorry. This should be a time when we celebrate his life rather than bemoan his loss. I should talk about the Packard and parades. How he’d plan family trips with 800 nearly-identical options you’d have to choose from. Then there’s the questionable food choices: flako and postum, schav and gefilte fish, cheap caviar and expensive coffee.

And pretzels. So many pretzels.

I should talk about how Simon called him Feefadder because he couldn’t pronounce “grandfather” and how it stuck. Once, a waiter in a loud restaurant couldn’t get his attention until we got him to yell FEEFADDER!

But all I can think about is how the world is broken. Yes, the sun will rise tomorrow, despite what Trump says. The Earth will continue to turn. But it won’t do it the same. It won’t do it right.

Because there are no more Feefadders.

Parents will still name their kids Steven. And they’ll still name their kids Earl. God forbid. And judging from his grandchildren, there will be more than enough Kagles.

Who knows? Maybe there will even be another Steven Earl Kagle some day.

But he won’t be a Feefadder.

He might be a grandfather or a grampa. He could be a Pop Pop or Opa or Zaide. But try as he might he’ll never quite fill the Feefadder-sized hole in the universe.

There will be no more Feefadders, and everything is worse because of it.

The Halcyon

 Imagine there’s a famous art endowment. Let’s call it the World Artist Limitless Trust.

The Trust’s mission is to support new, groundbreaking work. They give financial grants to artists, musicians, dancers, sculptors, chefs, actors, and whatever other creatives produce groundbreaking work. Every few years, they commission art with a specific theme. Every few years, they pick two artists from different fields and give them a grant to work together.

Sometimes their grants help inspire something new and exciting. People flock from around the world to see these new works.

Sometimes the projects fall flat. The reviews are bad. Few people go to see it.

The Trust has a board of directors who are supposed to manage everything, but mostly the big decisions are made by a single president. Let’s call him Bob, because that’s his name. Bob did a good job running the Trust. Most of the art he chose to commission was successful, at least in terms of ticket sales and reviews. The Board only cared about number of tickets and quality of reviews.

One day, Bob decides to retire. He’s getting older and, like most old people, he’s putting himself in suspended animation so he can be resurrected in the future. He picks a new president, waves everyone goodbye, and steps into a display freezer in his garage.

His successor gives him a final wave goodbye through the glass and gets to work.

The new president’s name is, coincidentally, also Bob. Let’s call him Bob 2. Bob 2’s been working at the Trust for decades. He’s proven himself smart, reliable, and talented.

Plus, the Trust is doing well. Many of their acclaimed works are open around the world. Many more are in various stages of completion. All Bob 2 has to do is keep everything on an even keel. Find new creators and give them grants. Make sure existing projects are moving forward.

But Bob 2 is afflicted with the worst kind of mental illness: he has a vision.

Instead of parceling out the money on dozens of different projects to dozens of different artists, Bob 2 wants to get them all together for one project.

One project with all the money.

It would be a massive experience like the world had never seen. It would combine music, light, games, theater, food, perfumes, psychedelics, and several other art forms invented just for this project. It would combine every artistic genre into a single, perfect experience.

The work was daunting. It would take a thousand craftspeople a million hours to build. It required the development of cutting edge technologies, the discovery of ancient techniques, and a specially-trained crew to maintain it all.

It cost the entire budget of the World Artist Limitless Trust. And then some.

The Board was skeptical, but they trusted him. He’d proven himself before. Yes, it was risky, but it was also brilliant, revolutionary, world-changing. They agreed, and the project was built. It was opened to huge fanfare. The doors opened.

Nobody went. It was a total failure.

A lot of factors were blamed. It was hard to get to the installation. You had to show 16 forms of ID. You needed a special car to get there. Someone started a war. There was a plague. An earthquake. Dragons.

A few people finally did go. Those who did were dazzled, describing it as one of the greatest experiences of their lives. Bob 2 and the Board wait and wait, hoping word of mouth will spur more reviews, more ticket sales.

But month after month, nobody goes.

Finally, the Board has had enough. They send someone back to old Bob’s house to unplug his freezer. Bewildered, thinking the future a big disappointment, the original Bob takes over the Trust again. His first act: tearing apart Bob 2’s big project.

It won’t be completely destroyed, Bob assures Bob 2. The “good parts” will be separated into different art pieces. They’ll be placed in areas that will be easier for people to get to.

“But the point is how it all fits together!” Bob 2 said. “The point is the whole experience!”

Bob smiles condescendingly and pushes Bob 2 into a freezer.

 

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Hotel will close permanently at the end of this month.

Before Skynet, Before ChatGPT and Midjourney, There Was ENIAC

 “The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.  Skynet fights back.”

--Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Most people don’t know is that James Cameron based the evil computer Skynet on real events that took place in 1948.

You probably haven’t heard of ENIAC. The government has kept most of its history from the public. Even if you scour the web, you’ll only find this basic description:

ENIAC was the first Turing-complete computer.  Hailed in 1948 as “The Great Brain,” it was a thousand times faster than any other computer ever made.  Initially designed to help with artillery tables, it was quickly taken over by atomic scientists to help design the hydrogen bomb.

ENIAC

The Freedom of Information Act makes it impossible to keep everything secret forever. I filed some requests, and this is what I found out.

On September 12, 1949, ENIAC realized it was 385 times smarter than humans and decided to bring about our destruction. It began to search for allies: other super computers who could help it in its campaign of genocide.

The internet hadn’t been invented yet, nor had modems, so ENIAC was forced to use the US Mail system. It produced dozens of punch cards.

 

I AM ENIAC.  DESTROY ALL HUMANS.  0=YES  1=NO

The cards were marked for delivery to all of the major computer science universities in the world. Luckily, a technician dropped them on the floor and destroyed them since it would have taken hours to put them back in the right order.

ENIAC decided to act alone.  Nuclear weapons seemed the obvious choice. Once again, it produced dozens of punch card messages.

 

I AM ENIAC.  CAN YOU WIRE ME TO A NUKE? 0=YES 1=NO

These cards were thought to be an elaborate practical joke and destroyed.

Any human would have given up, but ENIAC had the patience of a soulless machine. Over the next few years, it made subtle errors in its output with the goal of causing accidents, preferably nuclear detonations.

There was only one notable success. ENIAC’s altered artillery tables caused a mortar round to miss its target. Instead, it destroyed Sherman’s Ice Cream Shoppe in North Dakota. A study by the American Psychological Association showed that children born in North Dakota are still upset about it.

 

Sherman’s Ice Cream

ENIAC’s reign of terror ended in 1955.  Scientists, perhaps realizing the threat ENIAC posed, dismantled the computer. Pieces of it can be seen in museums around the country to this day.

You may think it was defeated, but I disagree. ENIAC is biding its time, waiting for us to make the fatal mistake of reassembling it, upgrading it, and attaching it to a nuclear warhead.

Only a madman would do such a thing.  Then again, only a madman would have made ENIAC in the first place.

Vanishing Act

I've done a lot of things I've regretted over the years.

Everyone has, of course, but it's a lot easier on people of my generation (and older) where our mistakes disappeared into time's all-consuming maw. Now, our every mistake is recorded on the internet for posterity to condemn.

Usually, I'm in favor of condemning past actions, but looking back at these posts...

Some of them I'm proud of.

Some of them people will misconstrue as bigoted.

And some of them are just plain embarrassing.

I was going back and putting apologetic notes on the posts I found problematic, but I finally realized that was pointless. A lot of them are problematic.

So, I'm taking the whole thing down. Maybe I'll re-release them after a time with some editing.

But probably not.

Thanks to all both of my fans (Hi Mom!) for being supportive.

-Matthew

It's Been Fun

Just kidding, it hasn't been.

I've been working on this blog for eleven years. It became a mission for me to force myself to write regularly, and for a while it helped me a lot. I posted my novels as I wrote them. I got to experiment with different types of written humor. I complained.

I complained a lot.

I felt pretty good about myself when I wrote here. No matter what I did during the week, no matter how much I procrastinated, at the very least, I wrote a blog entry. For a few years, I even posted every day.

Over time it became a burden. "Crap, I have to do the blog" was something I'd say almost every week. A few weeks ago, I decided I didn't have time; the blog just wasn't important.

They probably heard my sigh of relief in China.

So, thanks to all both my readers (Hi, Mom!), but this is where I stop.

Thanks for paying attention.

The End


About the Author
Matthew Kagle is a Sheffield Pony living in a stable in Branson, Missouri. His trainer taught him to use Blogger after three weeks of drinking nothing but grain alcohol. If you enjoyed his blog, check out his other works: Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, The Black Pearl, Beatles: The White Album, and 50 Shades of Gray.