This particular parenting experience has been like a large nuclear bomb on the small village of my life

A place

Deadwood, SD. If you enjoy the HBO series, you are my friend. David Milch worked under Robert Penn Warren at Yale and uses a telescreen-recorder machine as an integral part of the writing process. How those two facts relate, I have no idea.
Deadwood, SD, the actual physical space, is a town built out of a canyon made from dynamite and immigrant sweat. It feeds on nostalgia and the absent-minded avarice of tourists who are not put off by the incessant sound of slot machines. I dislike the place, though for complicated reasons into which I won’t go two of the three vacation days I have taken this work year have sent me to Deadwood. Playing Texas Hold Em with an actual dealer and substantive amounts of money changing hands can make up for the nursing home dynamic, if you’re into games of risk and credit card debt.


A joke
A man wakes up one morning with a hangover. Going downstairs, he says to his wife, "Honey, I know I made a fool of myself at the company party last night. Remind me what I did."
"You got in an argument with your boss."
"Well, piss on him," says the man.
"You did. He fired you," replies his wife.
"Well, screw him!" the man screams.
"I did," says his wife. "You're back to work on Monday."

Is this funny? No. It is not. Even if the socioeconomic/lifestyle demographic at which it is pitched is a frightening "five years from now when your life instantiates itself as a kind of hell," it would not be funny. It is more of a warning, functionally speaking.