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Commencement Address to the class of 2026
To the graduating class of 2026,
I’m sorry.
I know it’s not recommended to open an oratory with an apology, but a) I am Canadian and b) I have very little positive to share with you today. If this gathering were taking place on a deserted island upon which we were all stranded, my contribution to the communal resource pool would be a bag of bitter tasting fortune cookies of low nutritional value, that somehow said the work “fuck” when you opened one, with the same fortune in each cookie, written on a mysteriously non-flammable slip of paper incapable of being used as kindling for a signal fire. The fortune inside each cookie? “We’re all going to die.”
My customary optimism aside, I don’t want you to think that you don’t have a future. You do! It’s just that your future won’t be significantly different from the previous future, which is our current present.
For instance, you will occasionally have a job. You will swing from job to job like George of the Jungle, intermittently face-planting into the trunk of a downsizing tree. Some of you, in what is a well-established human tradition, will lose your job to a machine. This is not a new thing. One of your ancestors once made a living giving piggyback rides from one cave to another cave. It was the earliest version of Lyft. They held this job until some neolithic tech bro invented the wheel.
Losing your job to a machine isn’t ironic anymore. It’s just Tuesday.
Some of you will find a partner and start a family, which right now means adopting a cat or a dog. We used to say “settle down and start a family” but I can tell you, next to none of you will ever get to “settle down.” You and your partner won’t just have side hustles, you’ll have back hustles, a top hustle, an oblique hustle, a foot hustle–which we now call OnlyFans–and, just maybe, a gastrointestinal hustle.
In your future, technology will still be very disappointing. No holodeck. No lightsabers. Virtual reality will still be some over-glorified version of having a small television strapped to your face.
Healthcare in the future? No tricorders. Doctors will still test you by sticking hard objects in your various holes. Dentists will still shove a steel hook in your mouth, like your annual checkup is yet another remake of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” They will still use a mirror stuck onto the end of a stick to look in your mouth, like a World War II infantryman trying to locate a sniper while behind cover.
In the future, the test for prostate or colon cancer will still consist of a smartphone wormed up your pooper, which has been inflated with air like a wheelbarrow tire. The camera resolution will be better than ever, but there will still be a lab tech sitting there telling you to just relax before you get to experience what it’s like to be an iPhone case.
How will you consume media in the future? Like we do now, except it will cost more. Streaming services will become even more convoluted and fragmented. Want to watch the latest Marvel movie, “Avengers: Who’s Left?” You’ll have to subscribe to the channel “Disney M”. Looking forward to the reboot of Stranger Things, “Working For Vecna, the Middle Manager”? Better add Netflix St-Sz to your credit card.
In the future you’ll still get to binge all of the shows you want, because you will never need to leave your home to buy anything ever again. Food, clothing, medicine, artificial limbs, you name it, someone will bring it to your door. Want to buy a new car? It will drive itself over and go sit in your parking space.
Need to have surgery done? Just take off your clothes and go sit in your new car; it will operate on you while the new season of your favourite show is playing. If you need an organ transplant, DoorDash MD will bring it straight to your car. Here’s that liver you ordered, no onions.
I encourage all of you to become shut-in consumers. Stop going out to shop. Support the growing delivery economy. That way, it will be there for you when your education devalues to zero and your car starts supporting you by driving itself to take-out places for the ultra-rich.
Because honestly, when it comes to food, I believe the most futuristic thing your generation will get to experience firsthand is the dietary transition to insect protein.
You think I’m kidding? Today, as you sit here in your matching graduation cult robes, there are pet food companies that have started using insect protein in their products. And, as we are all aware, animal testing is always followed by human trials.
Dystopic stories predicted that we would end up eating each other. Eat human beings? Are you nuts? The human body is full of valuable organs and tissues and chemicals that the billionaires will buy so they can live until they’re 150 years old. Why do you think Elon Musk is encouraging people to have more kids?
No. No. In the dinner hour of the future, you will tear open your monthly government stipend 50-pound bag of insect kibble, and pour out a bowl for you and a bowl for your pet/child. And, as you pour in a half-cup of rationed drinking water to activate the beetle gravy, you and your pet/child will look each other in the eyes, and you will think to yourself: at least I was able to get our food delivered.
Or maybe not. Predicting the future is hard, and we aren’t very good at it. We can’t even predict the weather two weeks from now with any dependable accuracy. You think you’ve got next month’s long weekend weather nailed down; somewhere a butterfly flaps its wings, next thing you know your country is sliding into a dictator’s back pocket.
Maybe in the near future, maybe even later today when you’re in the emergency room being treated for a cut from a flying mortarboard, somewhere there’s a butterfly that is about to flap its wings, causing a chain of events that will heal our world and give future generations a chance to live ideal lives.
And I hope, I truly hope, that butterfly gets to flap its wings before it ends up in a bag of pet food.
Good luck to the Class of ’26. I thank you for your attention.
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The dark forces are coming, maybe this year
We all spent the last 360 and some days travelling tens of thousands of kilometers through space, flying around a massive spherical fusion reactor, spinning in place as we flew. Gravity and photons and time did the heavy lifting, while we all lived through another year of absurd nonsense, waiting for the darkness to come and annihilate us all.
Unmask! Unmask! Unmask!
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FREE template for a corporate email announcing that someone has been let go
Hello valued employees (and contractors),
Please be informed that effectively immediately, [name] is no longer with [company].
To facilitate a smooth transition, we ask that you not submit any questions, offer any comments, or look anxiously at coworkers during this transition period.
You can assist this transition by not discussing the terminated employee in any fashion, including any conversation containing nostalgic observations or a forlorn tone. Always remember that our corporate values of TRUST and WISDOM OF LEADERSHIP are not supported by any type of looking back. We as an organization are always looking forward.
Be advised that our IT team has deleted all email and IM communications originating from the terminated employee. At this time, we ask that you take any hard copies of such messages, or any handwritten sticky notes mentioning the terminated employee, and place them in your department’s secure shredding collection box.
As per our corporate offboarding process, please say the following points aloud:
- Let the name of [name] be stricken from every company obelisk and stelae.
- Let the name of [name] be stricken from any standing committees and work-related volunteer activities.
- Let the name of [name] pass into obscurity, until none but Legal and HR shall remember it–until the prescribed record retention period has passed, and the last remnants of [name] are purged from all corporate systems from that moment until the end of time.
Thank you for your understanding and patience during this transition. Our IT team will inform the lucky employee who won the draw and gets to move up to dual monitors.
Onward,
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exercise
The ship kicked on the anti-grav pads and the shuddering plunge through the planet’s thin atmosphere smoothed into a gliding descent through the final cloud layer. The ship lowered to about fifty meters above the planet’s surface, a rocky beach of blue-black gravel and stones. There were some boulders that were several meters tall, but the majority of the rocks were shorter than I was.
“Ship, let’s go lower,” I said.
The ship complied, slowly descending to about twenty meters from the planet’s surface. The blue-black stones contained reflective flecks that glittered in the star light.
“Ship, do a slow advance,” I said.
The landscape outside of the curved viewscreen began moving. I watched it glide past, scanning the terrain for a particular feature.
It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for: a protruding lump of shiny light blue metal. It looked like an exotic skin blemish, an oval hillock of cobalt blue… which is exactly what it was.
I reached out with a finger and tapped the viewscreen where the mineral deposit was. “Ship, there,” I said.
The ship, a true circular flying saucer, rotated on its internal axis and obediently closed the distance to the deposit.
“Ship, set down with perimeter edge ten meters away from the site,” I said.
I felt, rather than heard the landing gear slide out from underneath the ship. It swung down and settled onto the surface with a gentle thump that I barely registered.
I got out of the chair I thought of as the “pilot’s seat” and took a few deep breaths to calm myself. As eager as I was to leave the ship for awhile, I always felt some anxiety when setting foot onto a strange planet. I’d done it a few dozen times, but it always came with a sense of dread.
Would this be the time my suit failed? Would the ship malfunction and take off without me? Would it turn its weapons on me and blast my atoms across this sparkling desolation?
None of these things had happened before, obviously. But one of the universe’s lessons is clearly obvious when you’ve been chasing resources in it:
There’s a first time for everything.
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the opening of my colonial period plantation novel
I came to the town of Le Mallard in search of my old linguistics professor who had taught at the college I’d graduated from some years ago. In truth, I was less interested in renewing acquaintances with him than in retaking possession of a book I had left in his care the previous summer, an antique journal of macabre and inscrutable entries penned by an elder ancestor of mine; a French aristocrat who had been rewarded for his loyalty and skill in battle with a ducal fief consisting of a coastal plantation famous in its time for its prolific citrus orchards.
Duke a l’Orange had lived to see his fief become a most valuable enterprise, thanks in no small part to the native labour pool of workers he employed, a people known for their unusual grey skin tone, large hands, and tree climbing ability. The historic name of this tribe was lost to antiquity by dint of the labourers’ own illiteracy and lack of an oral tradition. My ancestor came to regularly refer to this workforce as, “those grey-faced orange-picking cunts.”
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I wrote a book
This is my second comedy collection, a book of jokes that were written over the last five years. If you consider the last five years and their general cuddly nature, you will understand the partial sentiment of the book’s title.
The title also indicates how I use humor as a coping strategy and defensive shield. I may not whistle past the graveyard, but I certainly recite a few one-liners as I go by.
This is available as a Kindle ebook; click the cover below to visit the sales page on Amazon. Consider buying a copy as an emergency cache of chuckles to be opened in unfunny times.
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I think I want a robot
I think I want a robot
I think we’re all past due
For robots that will do the things
That we don’t want to doI think I want a robot
That can use a mop and pail
Not a half-brained little vacuum
That looks like a bathroom scaleI think I want a robot
That can change and make the bed
That will make the toilet sparkle
Just like a bald man’s headI think I want a robot
That can wash and iron shirts
That can cook up tasty meals
Complete with fine dessertsI think I want a robot
That can’t become self-aware
That won’t turn into SkyNet
Or throw me down the stairsI think I want a robot
That can clean and mend and fix
That can repair a leaky faucet
And serve sirloin steak at 6:00I think I want a robot
That will follow Asimov’s Laws
And won’t spend memory searching
For a “kill the humans” clauseI think I want a robot
That can also work outdoors
That’s just as good at mowing grass
As it is at waxing floorsI think I want a robot
With a lifetime warranty
And when my lifetime’s over
It will help to bury me -
Dialogue
“We should know pretty soon if he made it or not,” he said. It was almost a question, and he looked up from his disassembled firearm.
“Pretty soon,” she agreed.
She went back to doing her weapon maintenance. He took in a deep breath and sighed.
“You should get some rest,” she said without looking up from the improvised table in front of her. “If he doesn’t make it–“
“I don’t want to think about that,” he said tersely.
“If he doesn’t make it,” she repeated without acknowledging the interuption, “we’ll need to abandon this post PDQ.”
“You don’t think he’ll succeed,” he said. “You’ve already–“
“What I think doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s all up to him now. But we should be ready to evacuate if we need to, which is why you should go get some rest.”
He waited for her to say more, but she continued working in silence until he got up and walked to the crew quarters, his shoulders slumped. His mind was a dull exhausted lump of despair sparring with hope.
She was right, he thought. We should be ready to flee if we have to.
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is this thing on?
Mic check, mic check. Test, one two three. Check, check.
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Courts of Chaos | comedy + writing blog 