Dave's Fiction Warehouse

“E nshittification” is an apt word of the year. Maybe it should be the word of the decade. I would like to thank the Guardian for bringing it to my attention, and writer Cory Doctorow for coining it. If you’ve interacted with Amazon lately — and who hasn’t? — you know what this word means. Ditto for any interaction with Facebook or Google or Instagram or X, or really with any chain store or major bank or hospital. It’s a natural consequence of the American credo that that growth will be infinite, that profit must increase no matter what. In a flagging market, that means flogging demand by devoting more resources to advertising and customer manipulation (also known as lying). It means reducing what you spend on the actual product or service you’re selling (also known as making it shittier). Hence this phase of late-stage capitalism where everything is increasingly expensive and increasingly worthless. I keep thinking of the last time I bought socks via Amazon. These were somehow bamboo...

  Timothy Bottoms and Cloris Leachman I can’t remember when I first read Larry McMurtry’s novel “ The Last Picture Show ” – early ’70s probably – but it was years before I got around to seeing  the movie . And when I did see it for the first time, it was probably on a 27-inch TV hooked up to a VHS player.  So it was good to watch it again last night, this time streamed via Netflix on our medium-large TV.  Maybe it was the bigger screen and higher resolution, or maybe it was all the years that have passed since then, but the film struck a haunting minor chord in a way it hadn’t before.  “The Last Picture Show” was billed as a coming-of-age story. Maybe it is. But to me the two young protagonists, Duane (Jeff Bridges) and Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) now come across as the story’s least compelling characters. Same with the young Cybill Shepherd as Jacy. They’re all adequate, but playing callow teens couldn’t have been much of a stretch. Bottoms, in particular, seems pr...

I got on Bluesky. Not that I needed another social-media time suck, but it seemed like a good way to add my vote to the 21 million or so who have come to loathe dufus billionaire Leon Musk and his loveable sidekick, Jabba the Trump. I see I now have 300 followers. Forget how many I had on Twitter, which I quit a couple of years ago. Maybe 40? Let’s just say that, as empty gestures go, my Bluesky plunge is about as empty as they get. Still. People on Bluesky like to go on about how much nicer it is, how much more encouraging and less toxic. Maybe, I guess. But it really doesn’t seem much different from pre-Musk Twitter. It’s still another social media site that runs on clicks and likes and shares. All of which push even the most enlightened users toward hot-take sarcasm, painfully-stretched metaphors and snide shit-posting. On the other hand, I am seeing some nice cat pictures, interesting historical oddities, and talented people doing art and needlepoint and wildlife photography. ...

  T he “bucket list” is yet another dubious gift from baby boomers to younger generations. It’s this idea that one is finally old enough to consider the possibility of death, and thus had better experience (like, pronto) all those destinations that web sites and periodicals and influencers say must be experienced as proof of a full and vibrant life. The phrase entered the lexicon via a dumb movie of the same name in 2007 – significantly, the same year the iPhone came on the scene.   Now we all have our bucket lists. It’s why so many dopes still try to run with the bulls at Pamplona. It’s why the locals in Venice and Barcelona and Machu Picchu have come to despise tourists. I too hate the phrase and the concept, but I’m as prone to its pull as any other old bastard.  Thus, our recent trip to Alaska. See, I’ve occasionally told people that I’ve been to every state in the Union except Alaska and Maine. Now I’ve crossed another one off the list. Was that the sole reason for t...

L ook: There are no undecided voters. Not this time. Let’s just be done with that nonsense right now. Those who claim indecision at this late date are disingenuous at best and self-serving liars at worst. They imagine that seeming to waver on the starkest political choice in American history makes them appear somehow thoughtful, somehow relevant.  It’s the Lady or the Tiger. You know that story, right? Except that there are no doors. You can see both right there in front of you. The tiger will eat you. The lady will not. Choices, choices. The MAGA crowd is full of rubes and opportunists who think they can ride that tiger. They imagine that they can enjoy and even guide its depredations from a safe perch above its claws and behind its jaws. Let’s go eat some immigrants! Let’s burn some books! Let’s teach those bitches who’s their daddy!  The tiger metaphor only goes so far. Trump’s only real strengths are complete self interest, total amorality and a certain measure of animal ...