🔭 The Monster At the End of the Essay

What was that? Up there, before you scrolled down. Did that say there's a monster at the end of this essay??? Shit no! My pockets and Pokédex are at capacity!!!

We need a hero (key of A minor), cuz heroes decapitate monsters, and a decapitated monster is, well, gross, but a lot less threatening. Unless you're spiking a Hyperborean rave with Medusa's head. That's from Pindar the poet, not Pindar the wrestler—whom, coincidentally, was ceremonially beheaded. (Sic and sick.)

Noggins aside, keep an eye out for a hydra situation. Cue the Indiana Jones meme: “Why did it have to be multi-headed reptilian quasi-immortals who embody the futility of raging against the machine sans artifice?” Yada yada “Archaeological Fantasies Podcast.” I've been jonesing to shoehorn in their “Indiana Jones and Pseudoarchaeology” episode. It's just within reach… I can get it… I can almost reach it.

Not-so-idle swap: One of the co-hosts, Dr. Jeb Card, also co-hosts “In Research Of,” which boldly seeks out the facts behind the plesiosaur necks and turtlenecks of Leonard Nimoy in “In Search Of.” The whole shebang (#!) was inspired by the delightful “Rachel Watches Star Trek.” I'm catching up on both at warp speed on a used, off-brand mp3 player. (Every time you order from Amazon, a biblically accurate angel deadbeat-fathers a nephilim.)

But you don't have to take my word for it.

Wait, that's the wrong trekker-cum-presenter. I Am Not Geordi La Forge also voices “LeVar Burton Reads,” which is like “Reading Rainbow” ASMR for adults except when he accosts an Irish brogue. Just to be clear, “LeVar Burton Reads” is the actual name of the podcast, not some weird flex or graffiti tag… yet.

Speaking of which, back in March, in a massive attack on fun, Reuters unmasked Banksy, inciting worldwide rewatches of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” and “House”-Not-Holmes—hey, I just got that. The former holds up. The latter is too formulaic for escapist binging. Quick Lupus to detour for the “It's Not” YouTube supercut. (Sic and very sick.)

Let's rejoin our hero quest. “HeroQuest”! You know, that “I Can't Believe It's Not D&D” board game from the 90s. You can enjoy other people enjoying it in the second season of “Danger Things,” a sidequest of the Pathfinder-helmed “The Danger Club Podcast,” in which British actors relive Gen X and Millenial tropes via Kids on Bikes. (Your dodgy German veterinarian mobile mileage may vary.) Ross Harmston, GM for this outing, is a national treasure.

I've cut three hundred-odd words here (#!) about my own “HeroQuest” experiences. I haven't cut the song my wife sang about the Les Edwards barbarian on the box though:

Thundernuts! He has the nuts of thunder!
If you dare fight him, you've made a fatal blunder!
Your heads he will sunder! Your villages plunder!
Thundernuuuuuuts!

Fair warning, this essay ends in a few paragraphs. The furry blue draught is that this is another rickety tour de nostalgia with media recs. (Ross Harmston also hosts “Sequel Pitch,” a shark tank-style movie-lover's podcast.)

Never turn down red pills. Take all the pills, duh.

You know who's “A Real American Hero”? Rafael Concepcion. He's the lone coder David fighting the We-Make-The-Rules-And-Fighting-Fire-With-Fire-Is-Against-The-Rules Goliath of ICE with the app-fuck-Apple's-App-Store-cum-website “DEICER.” WIRED ran a profile on him in late March, though you'll need Level One copypasta skills to step over the paywall.

But a pin-pricking app can't defeat bullies unironically playing Cowboys and Indians. The real challenge is contextualizing this uncivil warfare as something bigger than partisan hackery. The Coke vs. Pepsi turf wars and Yes! We Have No Banana Republics approach to American politics is gossamer thin. Both major parties—and the companies pulling their puppet and purse strings—have already sold your freedoms. Maybe that's a baked-in feature of modern nation states. But throwing out babies with bathwater is neither moral, palatable, nor historically efficacious. (You certainly won't catch me advocating it within earshot of a cellphone.)

Remember the hydra? The monsters are due on Sesame Street.

Well look at that! This is the end of the essay and the only ones here are Jon Stone and Mike Smollin, author and illustrator of “The Monster at the End of This Book.” But their children's classic is just one in a long line of meta-fictional narratives that clue readers into the rigged game. (Thanks, Mom, for reading that book over and over again. And thanks, Mrs. Dietrich, our elementary school librarian, for pushing the similarly self-aware “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!” and “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales,” both by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith.)

Think Plato, not Play-Doh. λόγος, not LEGOs.

Someone on r/MandelaEffect insists there's a version of “There's a Monster at the End of This Book” that ends with a foil mirror. But if the real monster is you, the real monster is me, too. All of us are complicit.

Some more than others, though.

There's a self-published satire by Jeff Whitcher called “The Monster At the End of These Files”, featuring not Grover, but our second two-timer in chief.

Whoops (#!), I'm just another libtard reactivist with Trump Derangement Syndrome. (Sic and oh so sick of this bullshit.)

Oh, I am so embarrassed…