I feel like I ought to write something about what’s going on in Ferguson, and the general state of race relations six years into a presidency that was supposed to mark the beginning of “post-racial America,” but honestly… I can’t. I just fucking can’t.

Sorry about the language. I know it bothers some of my readers. But there’s no other way to express the weary depths of what I’m feeling right now. I am so thoroughly disheartened. And I’m also tired. Tired of the grinding wheels of conflict and argument and snark that keep the Internet chugging around in circles. Tired of endlessly yammering talking heads spreading fear and ginning up outrage on 24-hour “news” channels. Tired of half the country thinking the other half comes from Bizarro World, and the constant struggle-to-the-death clash of philosophies. Most of all, I’m tired of the utter intractability of this country’s biggest problems: racism and gun violence. It doesn’t seem to matter what we do or what our leaders say, or who’s actually on the side of justice in any given iteration of this story, we always end up back in the exact same nightmarish place, with a kid lying dead in the street, and cops dressed like Imperial stormtroopers lobbing tear-gas grenades at angry mobs, and buildings in flames.

So I hope you’ll forgive me for feeling like anything I might end up typing here is an utter waste of time and energy. I may as well stick to the innocuous, superficial pop-cultural nonsense. Either way, none of it will make a damn bit of difference. I won’t change anyone’s opinion about anything, or enlighten anyone to a new way of thinking, or even manage to clarify my own thinking. The best I can hope for is to provide my handful of readers with a momentary distraction and possibly a morsel of entertainment. I have no illusions about my words having any greater impact than that. And that’s the most disheartening thing of all… writing is my greatest talent, and it accomplishes nothing.

This just might be a fireplace-and-whisky sort of night.