Is Feline AIDS Still the No. 1 Killer of Domestic Cats?

It has come to my attention that some people—a paltry few, to be sure, but still a non-zero number of souls—find me to be a bit negative. For at least one of them, this seemed to be complaint (if you can believe that) more than simple observation: “Ever notice how many of your posts are about things you hate?” he noted of my Facebook activity. “So much hate, so little time.”

He was correct except for two things:

Hate is categorical, essential—there’s an immutable irrationality to it. Hate doesn’t need an argument. It barely even needs words beyond “I hate _____.” It’s polarizing, too. If you share my hatred, you’ll understand instantly, in your guts. If it’s alien, though, I can’t persuade you. When I say “hate,” it’s clear I’m not even trying to.

I don’t, however, write about things I hate. I write about subjects that make me angry, that disappoint me, that frustrate and sadden me. And, sadly and frustratingly, there happen to be a lot of those! From tacos and outer space to murder and cancer, I am angered by many, many things, and I find it useful, if not always joyful, to explore the whys and hows of that anger. Part of that is just a writer’s duty to pursue every angle, but it’s also so that the anger doesn’t own me: It can certainly be as irrational as hatred, but maybe if I can trace its origins, or break it down into its constituent elements, it will lose some of its power to warp my mood.

I realize this can sometimes be hard to take, and I worry that I personally, the human being behind this newsletter, might come off as a bit of a Debbie Downer. But I’m not! Can’t you tell how much fun I’m having with this? Still, I am actually careful at times: I have one friend out there who’s been having a hard time this past year—work is challenging, her mother is ailing and living in a war zone—and as much as I’ve wanted to reach out and say something, I know I’m not going to be particularly encouraging here. Kid’s got real issues that I cannot alleviate and will not sugarcoat. My fart jokes and stale puns are no help here.

Still, should I, the writer, be peppier? That is, should my first principle be to find beauty and happiness and proceed from there? Or should I be, like, coming at you off the bat with my deep wisdom and my triumphs over adversity? Instead of the worst taco I ever ate, should I, like 10,000 other hacks, pollute your feed with my forgettable, inexpert take on the best? One of those two is sure to make me barf—I’ll let you guess which.

I see plenty of this positivity out there on the ol’ social media: incredible sights, inspiring personal tales, words to live by. If you, my dear reader, are the creator of such content, then I know for a fact you have done it impressively well, especially if you are a paid subscriber. But please know that everyone else’s positive content is trash, superficial and pandering, insincere and performative, boring and underthought. Worse, it feels unnecessary. Do we really need so many wonderful things pointed out to us so often, and always in the same way, with the same evocations of wonder, hushed awe, and saccharine squee?

To be fair, some people need that. And I suppose I get it from a reader/consumer perspective: Maybe you’re already in the negative zone, and cat videos and fake Turkish proverbs are what you need to get through the day, or the next few minutes. (As people often ask me: Have you tried therapy?) That’s understandable. But to create such material? That feels dishonest, not because those lovely images and stories don’t exist but because they present with their faces a world whose wonders lie on the surface, easy to touch and experience, even through a computer screen.

But ours is a deeply broken world, threatened with further breakage in every sphere: ecological, social, economic, political. To glory in puppy dogs and ersatz Gandhi quotes is to lie to ourselves in ways that ultimately make things worse¹.

And that’s not what I want at all! I want, if you can believe it, to make things better. In fact, that is what my anger is directed at—phenomena that can change, can improve, can become something other than the awful crap they are right now. But first we need to recognize the shit, to pick it apart with tweezers like a zoologist with exotic spoor², in order to understand how it came to be. Only then can we figure a way to deal with and move beyond it.

In other words, I am working from a place of hope here! I do believe the world can be repaired, if only we are honest with ourselves about how broken it is now and if we make the effort—the annoying, exhausting, maddening, self-defeating effort—to be just slightly better—or really, just slightly less terrible—than we are today. That’s not negative at all! But good luck making an inspirational meme out of it.

“So little time”? Sheesh. I’m scarcely halfway through this initial 100-day run of essays, and I figure I’ve got about 60–70 more years of good writing left in me. That’s plenty of opportunity to catalog at least half of all the things that make me angry, including some that may not even exist yet. Oh man, that’s exciting! I don’t even know what I won’t like because it hasn’t been invented! Frankly, that gives me something to look forward to. As it should for us all. 🪨🪨🪨

Got something you’re angry about that I should be angry about, too? Write me and I’ll add it to my list!

I know I said I don’t/can’t/won’t play video games any more, but I make an exception for Monument Valley, a puzzle game that blends highly stylized beauty with gameplay that would make M.C. Escher gnaw his fingernails in frustration. The latest version, released by Netflix of all places, really builds out the MV world with seafaring exploration, and adds a note of climate crisis to the experience. Go play it (iOS, Android), and let me know when your brain has been fully turned inside out.