Everything Pickles

It starts innocently at the edge of the grocery aisle with a single jar of dill pickles sitting on a shelf. It is green, bumpy, and sour—a simple product of fermentation resting in vinegar and water.

Then, the market demands an expansion.

Next to the jar, the potato chips become pickle-flavored. Then the pretzels. Then the popcorn. This is a standard commercial trend, a sudden burst of corporate nostalgia capitalizing on a collective craving for a sharp, comforting flavor profile. Consumers buy into it, using the familiar taste of a traditional preservation food as a comforting snack during a stressful cultural moment. Outside, the real world feels increasingly fractured, but inside the store, the bright green labels offer a quiet distraction.

But the corporate trend keeps spreading.

By the next quarter, the flavor escapes the snack aisle entirely. Supply chains pivot to produce pickle-flavored seltzer, pickle lip balm, and pickle-infused condiments. There is no actual cucumber in these new variations. The physical vegetable is gone, replaced by a mass-produced chemical formulation—a specific combination of citric acid, sodium, and dill flavor targets sprayed over standard consumer goods.

This happens because the broader supply chains are quietly under strain. Across the globe, vital trade routes and major shipping channels are facing unprecedented disruptions, forced to navigate around regions locked in heavy, multi-front military friction. With foreign imports slowing and access to diverse international goods choked off by modern economic warfare, the retail infrastructure begins to turn inward.

The absurdity accelerates as the industrial grid consolidates. Brand after brand discontinues alternative flavor lines to focus entirely on high-margin, easily manufactured profiles like the pickle. The snack aisle turns into a monochrome wall of green packaging. The beverage coolers are stocked exclusively with briny variations. The personal care section features dill-scented soaps and lotions.

Every single consumer product category is cannibalized by the exact same flavor formulation. When fresh agricultural fields are scorched by fighting continents away, the food laboratories respond by synthesizing old-world preservation. The endless repetition of a single, factory-engineered flavor mimics a closed, rationed economy—a society subconsciously bracing for a long winter of scarcity while pretend-eating the ultimate food of siege survival.

The store contains nothing but the variations of the pickle. The consumer buys nothing but the pickle. The entire text of the inventory is just the pickle.

---

Other Side

The fluorescent lights cast a warm, soft glow inside Room 2B.
A single plastic ficus stood neatly in the corner.
Six participants sat comfortably around a sleek conference table.
The moderator wore a perfectly tailored slate-gray tie.
He had not provided a name, maintaining a professional distance.
He clicked his ballpoint pen twice to signal the start.
"Let's review the physical sensations of Somnium-9," he said evenly.

A woman in a yellow cardigan raised her hand with a calm smile.
"My chronic migraines completely vanished," she noted.
"My fingertips feel entirely numb, but it is quite peaceful."
A man in a rumpled suit nodded in agreement.
"The same happened to me, along with a mild aftertaste," he added.
"Like pennies and burnt copper, though it isn't unpleasant."
A college student relaxed back into her chair.
"I feel incredibly light, almost weightless," she murmured.
"Like my feet aren't even pressing against the carpet."

The nameless man stepped calmly to the wall.
He uncapped a black dry-erase marker.
With a fluid, practiced motion, he began to write.
The letters flowed flawlessly from right to left.
ssenbmuN appeared cleanly on the surface.

The woman in the yellow cardigan looked at the text, curious.
"Why are you writing backward?" she asked politely.
"And I realized we never caught your name during introductions."
The moderator kept his back to the group, his posture serene.
He wrote another mirrored word: etsaT reppoC.
"Names are for things that can be born," he replied smoothly.
"Names are for things that can eventually die."

"The drug alters your perception of reality," the nameless man added.
"Tell me about your last memory before waking up here."
The room temperature settled into a perfectly still, neutral cool.
"I took the pill in my bedroom," the woman recalled easily.
"Then my vision simply faded into quiet white static."
"I took it in my parked car," the businessman said, his voice level.
"My chest tightened, and my car horn started blaring."
"I swallowed three pills," the student shared, looking down.
"My heart rate monitor spiked, and then everything went silent."

The rumpled businessman adjusted his posture at the table.
"This is an orderly corporate wrap-up," he observed.
"Look at the text on the wall."
The entire room they sat in was perfectly reversed.
The wedding ring on the businessman's hand was missing.
The pocket on his suit coat had switched sides.

They all looked down at their resting, bloodless hands.
No one in the room felt the need to take a breath.
The wall clock remained perfectly still at 4:14 PM.
The college student pointed toward the exit without panic.
"The door handle is on the wrong side," she pointed out.

The moderator turned around very slowly.
He adjusted his tie with perfectly inverted hands.
He wrote one final mirrored phrase across the center.
eniltalF muinmoS.
The wall shifted from a corporate gray to a deep, steady crimson.
The word ssenbmuN began to dissolve into thin wisps of smoke.

"You didn't survive the trial," the nameless man explained gently.
His eyes held the quiet, glowing depth of an ancient hearth.
"Welcome to evaluation. You all took far too much."

How To Cut A Pizza

The first question I ask is how many degrees are in a circle?
The correct answer is, of course, three hundred and sixty.
Now, the next question I ask is, what is 360 divided by 6?
(Six being the number of slices in a standard slice pie, a pizza
designed to be sold by the slice.) The correct answer this time
happens to be 60, naturally, and which also happens to be the
number of degrees in one corner of an equilateral triangle. 
Taking this knowledge, and then, considering the universally
transferable adage of measure twice, cut once, and with the 
assumption that the pizza you are dealing with is as perfectly 
round as can be, select a point on the crust from where across
the rest of the pizza and to the opposite point you can detect
a sort of symmetry that you would like to emphasize and
compartmentalize. Now find the center point of the pizza. 
Firmly break through the crust with the blade, and, with some
downward force, draw the blade across the surface of the
pizza, through the center point and across to the antipodal
point of selection, again breaking through firmly the crust.
Turn the pizza 60 degrees and repeat the same cutting action, 
resulting now in 2 opposing 60 degree angles and 2 opposing
120 degree angles, or what I like to call, god's bow tie. And now, 
turn the pizza for the second time, and cut for the third, as accur-
ately through the middle of the pie as possible. With practice, of
course, you will gain accuracy, as well as speed. You can now
also practice the number of resulting slices by adjusting the size
of the angles. Bon Mathématiques!

To Donald Trump (comment via Whitehouse.gov/contact)

 Dear Mr . President,

I am an avid follower of your work. The things you have done to and for our country are certainly unprecedented, as only the strategy of a keen eye from a brilliant businessman can offer. I myself can and do also see ways that we can improve our nation, though those ways have more to do with making us greater in ways never before considered possible rather than those that would provide more of the same. I don't think it's too late for anyone to experience an healthy change of heart and mind, which you, sir, with utmost respect, seem to be long overdue for.

Life is not about any one thing, especially not something as mundane as making as much money as possible, which from all angles is how I inevitably see you. I only hope you can convince me otherwise; I can't imagine you doing a single charitable act for anyone, without concentrating on your bottom line.

I admit, I am an addict, and so I struggle with my own. I am happy enough when I find myself breaking even in the week leading up to payday. This isn't an underhanded asking of handouts by the way; just letting you know of the disparity, the people who still count pennies when you certainly couldn't be bothered.

I've recently deactivated my social media in the wake of the killing of Renee Nicole Good. I have said what I have needed to say, for better or worse, in all accounts, and now that book for me is closed, I am now considering physical media and in-person contact to be fundamentally crucial to my well being. Anything without a digital footprint. I am writing to you here, now, because it is of course the best way.

I didn't plan on writing this either. But everything seems to be coming to a head, y'know? 

I hope you're doing well. Let me know if there's anything I can do. I am willing and would be happy to help.

Truly,

MathYou

Winning Hands

I like to say that you ruined my life, 

but it's different when you can't hear your own voice.

Going off the rails, losing tracks, 

Running out of tofu and breadcrumbs.

You don't care, you never did,

With me it was fun or pretend.

Playing house, acting out,

Getting mad, scream and doubt,

Isn't that what life's about?

I don't care for second chances

Minds made up I'm wasting time

Older and I guess I'm wiser

Streets are empty, going back

All of it means nothing but it wasn't my fault,

Even if you think it has to be now.

Where are you to say I'm sorry,

To make me feel a certain way?

The beat reminds me what I'm doing.

Making rhymes and making sense.

I can't believe that it's all over,

That what we had is old and spent,

Looking back in circumspect.

Alchemical Reaction

If there's anything I learned from making pizza, it is this: anyone can, but not everyone should.

Anyone can because the technology to make a pizza is designed around the person, not the pizza itself. Our capabilities as human beings, the basic actions refined over many, many generations have defined just what pizza is and what we define as a perfect slice of pie. If you have the aspiration to learn how to make pizza and then to do it well, well, that's really all it takes. The universe will provide you with the keys, the rudimentary tools and you will learn both the best way and your own way. The solution of the remaining and persisting art form is where these two ideas meet. All art is formed simply by combining two, often otherwise incompatible, ideas. If it works, it sticks.

So then, we know what constitutes a perfect slice, and what it takes to make one. This in mind, not everyone in the present universe should pursue such an unified endeavor, for we would probably run out of such finite resources necessary to actually building pizza quite soon. Not to mention, all that pizza, no matter how perfect, would sure get boring soon too if not eventually, it would happen. Believe me, at certain times in my life I've lived on leftover slice pies, but if I didn't have friends to share them with, others more than happy to take them off my hands, I'd probably be a house painter or something by now. 

Anyone can make a pizza, a perfect one, over and over and over. There will be a lot of bad ones, ones you wouldn't make your worst enemy try to eat, these go directly in the garbage. Burned, mangled, beyond any identification. But even if arms were somehow purged from our evolutionary toolbox, if we dissolved into some sort of floating energy field mass and had to manipulate external matter telepathically, the pizza kitchen would still be a familiar, comfortable place designed with us in mind, waiting for us to stoke the fire and ring the bell.

Our own way of seeing things and experiencing them, however detailed and exact, will never account for the whole multitude of never ending possibilities, the ultimate source of diversity, the variety that is the very spice of life. You can make a pizza taste, emulate, look like anything, but it's still pizza. Sometimes you'll want a steak, a cake, a shake or even a salad. If every single person on the face of this planet from now on just decided to only make pizza, well, that's no world, no dream I would want to take part in.

And speaking of dreams, my whole outlook, as a pizza cook first because that's when it happened, changed for good when I realized that I am just a character in someone else's dream, facilitating their deepest desires. It wasn't my choice to make a pizza shop, not consciously anyway, if I somehow am, too, the dreamer indeed. I remember the lights, the music, my hands moving before me and thinking, there is something bigger going on here, bigger than me and bigger than this. I didn't, in that moment, put down what I was doing and just walk away on my own, beginning a new and different quest. This was it, how I got here today. It is all part of the same thing, these events being absolutely transferable as part of this big big life that we all share, making everything better, even perfect, from moment to delicious moment. I only hope that one day soon you will get to experience what it is to be the one who makes dreams, even those of someone you don't know and most likely will never even meet, an entirely new reality for all of us, because that is good.

Expense

Civilization has always been on its way to get somewhere that it will never fully reach, because it isn't a place, it's a state of being. As a part of it, the present state has potential to appear better than others, whether less primitive or oppressive or just more comfortable or free, or destined to be most true. Having grown up in a certain system, one gets attached to a certain way of doing things, with certain expectations within ones own life and for those around and about them. But each occurrence of people working together to make themselves and the world as they see it, no matter their reach, has this in common, the limitless threshold of growth based on the idea of righteousness. 

The opposite of civilization is a form of chaos, either with or without human interaction, in which nature continues to work in mysterious ways. To the civilized mind this would seem like madness or a nightmare, being unrecognizable and without any sense of familiar organization. This realm of being, though, still has the potential for infinite growth of its own sort, one that cannot be harnessed and tamed, but only exists to be smothered and altered. The physics do not change, only the perceived reason and likeness of being do. Potential is not lost or gained; it is replaced.

We have a tendency to start over when things aren't going correctly. Sometimes that means moving on completely, severing all ties with previous ways. This means going back to how things originally were, but not how they were before we got here, rather how things were for us when we first realized them. Before we realized things, they still existed, but beyond our scope of perception. Now we can do things to them and with them, even if that only means thinking about them or leaving them alone entirely. Some of the best things happen when they are left alone so that nature may truly take its course.

Before this happens, we begin to spend our time more and more wisely, having learned our place here and having developed a reason to be and to do things with things and each other or by ourselves. This is good for awhile, but of course we can't go on doing things this way forever. We expect a change, because that's how things are. If they didn't change, they would not be. And so we change them ourselves, and they go on changing and so do we along with them, so things and ourselves become somehow different than it was in the first place. This is reason enough to go back to the first place.

Wealth and identity go hand in hand, as one is the byproduct of the other. As we gain insight we obtain a set of values that remain important as long as that insight persists. An understanding of the tradeoff can be just as valuable as the tradeoff itself, and these are both liquidated into a system of appreciation for all useful things. Still, these things would potentially exist without this value set, but we seem to be able to do more with them within this pretense of development and attainment, rather than sheer appreciation of the things themselves in their natural state. So we often prefer to go on changing for the sake of understanding.

Without understanding, the expectation of doing something within this physical realm is still quite apparent, a cohesive concept kept to ascertain. We have to do something before we can get something or before we can do something else. We were all born into this way of being and as far as we know nobody asked for it or for it to be this certain way, but we go on with it being this way because of our expectation and because of our lack of knowing any other way. At the root of it all, that's just how it is and how it's always been, so that's how it always will be and should be, because it works and nothing more. If it didn't work, we would have the unfamiliar, unrecognizable chaos that would be ugly and we surely would not like it. We would have no reason to go anywhere or do anything, no reason to participate or to get better, to make things, have things or want things, in fact in this case things might very well not even exist to us. That would not mean they don't, just not to us, for us or because of us. They would just exist, like us, and that is all.