Throughout the world, people who make Internet inquiries about Kuwa6226 meet violent deaths.
In online forums and chatrooms, people are warned not to mention the mysterious entity.
But who, or what, is Kuwa6226? A supernatural force? A cult? A global conspiracy?
Most people say that it’s better not to ask…and Kuwa6226’s reign of terror goes unchallenged.
***
Then two unlikely sleuths, from opposite sides of the world, unite.
Minoru Watase is a corporate IT employee in Japan. Julie Lawrence is a college student in the American Pacific Northwest.
Julie and Minoru have each lost a friend to Kuwa6226. Together, they are determined to discover Kuwa6226’s true identity and eliminate the menace.
Their search will take them from the streets of Tokyo to an American college town in Washington State. When they finally come face-to-face with Kuwa6226, Julie and Minoru will be unprepared for the revelation…and the ruthlessness of their adversary!
Kuwa 6226 is a horror-mystery with endless twists and turns!
In 1990 I was nearing the end of my college days. An older adult (in his late 30s), told me that I would never be taken seriously until I had gotten an MBA.
I was like: “Isn’t four years of college enough to work in the marketing or the accounting department?” But apparently not, according to the thinking of that era.
Back in my college days—about 35 years ago—young people were encouraged to get as much higher education as possible.
***
Should we blame the Baby Boomers? Why not? My parents, neither of whom had a college degree, ended up doing well. My dad started his own business. My mom started a second business with my dad. They prospered, but they both had to take roundabout paths to success, without college degrees.
Both of my parents reported that their fellow Baby Boomers with college degrees had a much easier time of it. As a result, “thou shalt go to college” was drilled into my head from an early age.
I did go to college. I got a four-year degree in economics. It helped me land my first job.
In the decades after my graduation, however, the landscape started to change. The college degree lost the scarcity value it had had in my parents’ early adulthood, or even mine.
At the same time, colleges and universities began concocting more low-value and worthless degree programs, in everything from communications and visual arts to various ethnic and gender-related fields. (Who in their right mind would pay for a degree in “queer studies”?)
The tide shifted dramatically about a decade ago, in the wake of the 2007-9 financial crisis. I was then meeting a lot of Millennials with liberal arts degrees who were working at restaurant jobs while paying back their student loans. (Not that there’s anything wrong with working at a restaurant, mind you. But you don’t need a college degree to do that. You shouldn’t get a college degree to do that.)
For a while the situation turned around. New college grads experienced a mini-boom in employment from 2021-4, as businesses were hoarding staff, and paying a lot of young grads unusually high starting salaries. In 2023, my friend told me that his daughter landed a corporate position at a salary of $90K, with a very ordinary 4-year degree from the University of Cincinnati, and no practical experience.
That was in 2023. Now, as you’ve likely heard, the job market for new college grads has imploded. The overall unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, which is not that high. But the unemployment rate for recent college gradsstands at 5.8 percent, with an even higher rate for young people overall.
Should they all become plumbers and HVAC technicians? Some people seem to think so. “Learn to code” was the cliché of a few years ago, leveled at anyone with a hifalutin degree who couldn’t find a job. Now “learn a trade” has become stock advice for college graduates who majored in anything but nursing, or a similar healthcare-related field. Even computer science and business school grads are having a tough time right now. It isn’t only the kids who majored in queer studies.
I get it. And yes, most major population centers could use some more HVAC technicians.
But at the end of the day, it makes no more sense for everyone to become a blue-collar tradesperson, than it does for everyone to get an MBA. Sooner or later, the law of supply and demand will kick in. There can be too many HVAC techs, if the field becomes too popular. (There can be too many nurses, too.)
What is true is this: our decades-long fascination with the 4-year college degree has finally hit the undeniable saturation point. This really happened around 2010, but many students—and their parents—were in denial. In 2025, denial is no longer possible, even for students and parents who dream of a sheepskin from aparticular university.
College enrollment is declining, and has been declining for more than a decade. At some point, the law of supply and demand will shift the other way. Young people with college degrees will become comparatively rare again. Demand for graduates in most mainstream college majors should recover.
In the meantime, the value of a college degree (for anything other than a degree in a healthcare field) will be less than it was when I graduated in the early 1990s.
In recent years, I have met many intelligent young people who are skipping college altogether. This would have been unthinkable in my youthful days. But young people today certainly have their reasons.
Milli Vanilli was a popular rock duo of the late 1980s. Two athletic frontmen, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, executed brilliant onstage dance routines as they performed then-popular songs like “Girl You Know It’s True”.
In 1989 and 1990, Milli Vanilli was huge.
The problem: Milli Vanilli was also a fake. The photogenic Morvan and Pilatus didn’t sing a note on the group’s bestselling album. They didn’t sing a note in concert, either.
Milli Vanilli was a musical Potemkin village. All the music—including the singing—was performed by unseen session musicians. This fact was revealed to the world in late 1990, and it caused quite a stir.
But Milli Vanilli weren’t the first “fake” rock band. In 1968, music publisher Don Kirshner created the animated, make-believe rock group, the Archies. The Archies were cartoon characters, but they nevertheless topped the Billboard 100 in 1969 with their song, “Sugar, Sugar”.
Neither the Archies nor Milli Vanilli would be the last fake band, however. Just recently, it was learned that the Velvet Sundown, a 1960s-inspired group with a wide following on Spotify, is AI-generated.
AI-generated images of the band, which have the now-familiar slick, fakey look and feel of AI art, contain the usual telltale signs of AI fraud. The lead guitarist has blended fingers, and his six-string guitar contains only five tuning keys.
From the Velvet Sundown’s Facebook page
The Velvet Sundown’s music leaves much to be desired, too. I listened to the band’s “Dust on the Wind”, which can be found on YouTube. Never mind that the title is a blatant ripoff of a 1977 Kansas song, “Dust in the Wind”. The style and lyrics show more than a trace of Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, whose music was no doubt used to train the AI. (Borrowings from Neil Young’s extensive solo work can also be detected.)
The Velvet Sundown is an interesting parlor trick of quasi-plagiarism. But like AI visual art, this semi-musical output only serves to illustrate the limits of AI: AI can plagiarize, warp, and remix artistic content. It can’t “create”.
I’ll leave the Velvet Sundown to the rest of you. I’d rather listen to Milli Vanilli or the Archies.
I discovered pop/rock music in 1981-2, when I was still in junior high. Because of the longevity of contemporary rock bands, I sometimes come across new material from bands that I first discovered 40 years ago.
This is always a treat, and it always makes me feel younger. (If the rock bands of your youth are still making new music, you can’t be that old, right? That notion works for the Boomers, so why not for Gen X?)
38 Special is one such still-active band from my junior high years. I became a fan of 38 Special back when their 1982 album Special Forces was new, and reached the number 10 spot on the Billboard 200. This album includes several of the group’s classic songs, including, “Caught Up in You” and “You Keep Runnin’ Away”.
The band has just released a new song on YouTube, “All I Haven’t Said”.
There have been some personnel changes since 1982, of course. (I believe 38 Special has a new lead vocalist.) So the sound is a little different, but the same spirit is there.
I like the new song, and I am glad to see that 38 Special is still around and making music.
I have been an avid runner since 1984. In more than 40 years of running, I have had relatively few injuries. But all of the injuries that I have had have involved my feet.
As a result, my quest for the perfect running shoe has lasted for 40 years, too. I’ve tried all the major brands at one time or another: Nike, Adidas, New Balance, etc.
I recently acquired this pair of Cloudsurfers, and they are like no running shoes I have ever owned. They are light for speed, but also provide extensive support.
My new Cloudsurfer running shoes
Regular readers will know that I often wax nostalgic about the 1980s. I’m a curmudgeon when it comes to most social media—and don’t even get me started about AI.
But sometimes, the more modern, high-tech solution represents an improvement. Cloudsurfers weren’t available for me to run in back in 1984. I wish such shoes had been on the market in my salad days.
The following excerpt is from Chapter 1 of Kuwa6226!
Go to bed already, an internal voice told him. Be sensible. Be responsible.
Hajime Takagawa rubbed his eyes as he stared at his computer screen. He knew that he should have been asleep an hour ago. The time was already 11:47 p.m.
The main room of his studio apartment was completely dark, except for the glow of his laptop screen. The remnants of Takagawa’s late dinner—ramen and salted pork—still hung in the semi-fetid air.
He would have to clean up the kitchen before he went to bed, too.
More than that, though,Takagawa would have to report to work tomorrow. No different from any other Tuesday. Another grueling morning commute through Japan’s Kantō region, which encompassed Greater Tokyo.
The commute was even more grueling when you were sleep-deprived. (This Takagawa knew from experience.)
But Takagawa, seated in the dark at his kitchen table, was too transfixed by what was on his computer screen.
It wasn’t pornography, nor online gambling. Not even social media—not really.
It was an online forum.
The forum was called: the International Legend Hunters (ILH) forum.
The forum consisted of a series of conversations with complete strangers, about supernatural phenomena and urban legends.
Takagawa leaned forward in his chair, the time and tomorrow’s troubles forgotten again.
Someone in Scotland had just posted a field report about an investigation of a supposedly haunted castle outside Edinburgh.
The poster’s handle was IanK12. Takagawa read IanK12’s report with great interest. He struggled over a few typos, awkward sentences, and unfamiliar words. The language of the International Legend Hunter’s forum was English, which Takagawa understood, though imperfectly.
If nothing else, Takagawa told himself, his new obsession might be improving his English skills. That could come in handy at work.
“I didn’t see any ghosts,” IanK12 typed at the end of his report. “But I didn’t debunk the legend, either.”
Takagawa pondered this. The whole point of the International Legend Hunters forum was to debunk urban legends and ghost stories. IanK12 had therefore failed. (Takagawa, though, would never be so ill-mannered as to point this out.)
But he was determined to do better. When Takagawa carried out the investigation he was planning, he would not fail. He would find the truth, and he would not lose his nerve.
And he already had a doozy of an urban legend in mind.
Takagawa read two more field reports. The first of these concerned a haunted village in the Philippines. The second was about a site in Ireland where UFOs were commonly seen—if you believed the stories.
These field reports, too, were inconclusive. They were little more than descriptions of the locations, with some random speculations thrown in.
The forum has no real purpose if no one ever comes to any conclusions, Takagawa thought. These investigations should be more thorough, more systematic.
Takagawa considered for a moment, and then typed:
“Interesting reports, to be sure. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to make several more trips over the coming days, to see if any phenomena present themselves? Then we may have some concrete data to analyze.”
He paused. Was his English correct, or at least comprehensible? He believed that it was. He typed another paragraph:
“On the other hand: while no one can prove the nonexistence of a negative, a lack of a phenomenon, repeated over multiple days, weighs in favor of disproving an urban legend.”
Then he added:
“Please excuse my poor English.”
Finally he pushed the POST button, and his remarks appeared in the forum.
His handle in the forum was TokyoTaka. Everyone in the forum posted under a pseudonym, often one that suggested nationality or location.
Takagawa’s comments of constructive criticism received several upvotes, but the enthusiasm was muted. Not everyone in the forum was serious about making systematic inquiries, let alone approximating the scientific method. Many of the forum’s contributors seemed content to exchange ghost stories in cyberspace.
Finally, Takagawa went to bed.
The time was 12:21 a.m., Tuesday morning.
His sleep was tortured. He dreamt of being chased through a forest by a giant skeletal creature, one with bulging green eyes and clattering teeth.
How I wrote a horror novel called Revolutionary Ghosts
Or…
Can an ordinary teenager defeat the Headless Horseman, and a host of other vengeful spirits from America’s revolutionary past?
The big idea
I love history, and I love supernatural horror tales.“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was therefore always one of my favorite short stories. This classic tale by Washington Irving describes how a Hessian artillery officer terrorized the young American republic several decades after his death.
The Hessian was decapitated by a Continental Army cannonball at the Battle of White Plains, New York, on October 28, 1776. According to some historical accounts, a Hessian artillery officer really did meet such an end at the Battle of White Plains. I’ve read several books about warfare in the 1700s and through the Age of Napoleon. Armies in those days obviously did not have access to machine guns, flamethrowers, and the like. But those 18th-century cannons could inflict some horrific forms of death, decapitation among them.
I was first exposed to the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” via the 1949 Disney film of the same name. The Disney adaptation was already close to 30 years old, but still popular, when I saw it as a kid sometime during the 1970s.
Headless Horsemen from around the world
While doing a bit of research for Revolutionary Ghosts, I discovered that the Headless Horseman is a folklore motif that reappears in various cultures throughout the world.
In Irish folklore, the dullahan or dulachán (“dark man”) is a headless, demonic fairy that rides a horse through the countryside at night. The dullahan carries his head under his arm. When the dullahan stops riding, someone dies.
Scottish folklore includes a tale about a headless horseman named Ewen. Ewen wasbeheaded when he lost a clan battle at Glen Cainnir on the Isle of Mull. His death prevented him from becoming a chieftain. He roams the hills at night, seeking to reclaim his right to rule.
Finally, in English folklore, there is the 14th century epic poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After Gawain kills the green knight in living form (by beheading him) the knight lifts his head, rides off, and challenges Gawain to a rematch the following year.
But Revolutionary Ghosts is focused on the Headless Horseman of American lore: the headless horseman who chased Ichabod Crane through the New York countryside in the mid-1790s.
The Headless Horseman isn’t the only historical spirit to stir up trouble in the novel. John André, the executed British spy, makes an appearance, too. (John André was a real historical figure.)
I also created the character of Marie Trumbull, a Loyalist whom the Continental Army sentenced to death for betraying her country’s secrets to the British. But Marie managed to slit her own throat while still in her cell, thereby cheating the hangman. Marie Trumbull was a dark-haired beauty in life. In death, she appears as a desiccated, reanimated corpse. She carries the blade that she used to take her own life, all those years ago.
Oh, and Revolutionary Ghosts also has an army of spectral Hessian soldiers. I had a lot of fun with them!
The Spirit of ’76
Most of the novel is set in the summer of 1976. An Ohio teenager, Steve Wagner, begins to sense that something strange is going on near his home. There are slime-covered hoofprints in the grass. There are unusual sounds on the road at night. People are disappearing.
Steve gradually comes to an awareness of what is going on….But can he convince anyone else, and stop the Headless Horseman, before it’s too late?
I decided to set the novel in 1976 for a number of reasons. First of all, this was the year of the American Bicentennial. The “Spirit of ’76 was everywhere in 1976. That created an obvious tie-in with the American Revolution.
Nineteen seventy-six was also a year in which Vietnam, Watergate, and the turmoil of the 1960s were all recent memories. The mid-1970s were a time of national anxiety and pessimism (kind of like now). The economy was not good. This was the era of energy crises and stagflation.
Reading the reader reviews of Revolutionary Ghosts, I am flattered to get appreciative remarks from people who were themselves about the same age as the main character in 1976:
“…I am 62 years old now and 1976 being the year I graduated high school, I remember it pretty well. Everything the main character mentions (except the ghostly stuff), I lived through and remember. So that was an added bonus for me.”
“I’m 2 years younger than the main character so I could really relate to almost every thing about him.”
I’m actually a bit younger than the main character. In 1976 I was eight years old. But as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m nostalgic by nature. I haven’t forgotten the 1970s or the 1980s, because I still spend a lot of time in those decades.
If you like the 1970s, you’ll find plenty of nostalgic nuggets in Revolutionary Ghosts, like Bicentennial Quarters, and the McDonald’s Arctic Orange Shakes of 1976.
***
Also, there’s something spooky about the past, just because it is the past. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
For me, 1976 is a year I can clearly remember. And yet—it is shrouded in a certain haziness. There wasn’t nearly as much technology. Many aspects of daily life were more “primitive” then.
It isn’t at all difficult to believe that during that long-ago summer, the Headless Horseman might have come back from the dead to terrorize the American heartland…
Not far from where I live, there is a stretch of Ohio State Route 125 that has been dubbed Dead Man’s Curve.
The spot is just a few miles from my house, in fact. I’ve been by there many times.
According to the urban legend, if you drive this section of rural highway a little after 1 a.m., you might see the faceless hitchhiker. From a distance, this male figure may look relatively normal. Once you get close, though, you’ll see that he has no face.
Sometimes the hitchhiker isn’t content to stand there by the side of the road and watch you. There have been reports of the phantom actually attacking cars.
Creepy, right?
Yeah, I think so, too….
Dead Man’s Curve on Ohio State Route 125 has a long and macabre history. Route 125 is the main road that connects the suburbs and small towns east of Cincinnati with the city. But much of the road (including Dead Man’s Curve) was originally part of the Ohio Turnpike, which was built in 1831. (Andrew Jackson was president in 1831, just to put that date in perspective.)
That section of the Ohio Turnpike was the scene of many accidents (some of them fatal), even in the horse-and-buggy days. The downward sloping curve became particularly treacherous when rain turned the road to mud. Horses and carriages would sometimes loose their footing, sending them over the adjacent hillside.
In the twentieth century, the Ohio Turnpike was paved and reconfigured into State Route 125. In 1968 the road was expanded into four lanes.
As part of the expansion, the spot known as Dead Man’s Curve was leveled and straightened. (As a result, the curve doesn’t look so daunting today…unless you know its history.) This was supposed to be the end of “Dead Man’s Curve”.
But it wasn’t.
In 1969, there was a horrible accident at the spot. The driver of a green Roadrunner—traveling at a speed of 100 mph—slammed into an Impala carrying five teenagers. There was only one survivor of the tragic accident.
Shortly after that, witnesses began to report sightings of the faceless hitchhiker during the wee hours. (The hitchhiker is said to be most active during the twenty-minutes between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m.) There have also been reports of a ghostly green Roadrunner that will chase drivers late at night.
Oh, and Dead Man’s Curve remains deadly, despite the leveling and straightening done in 1968. In the five decades since the accident involving the Roadrunner and the Impala, around seventy people have been killed there.
Is there any truth to the legend of Dead Man’s Curve?
I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve heard many eyewitness accounts from local residents who claim to have seen the hitchhiker. (Keep in mind, I live very close to Dead Man’s Curve, and it’s a local topic of discussion and speculation.) Almost none of these eyewitnesses have struck me as mentally imbalanced or deceitful.
I know what your last question is going to be: Have I ever driven Dead Man’s Curve between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. myself?
Uh, no. But perhaps I’ll get around to it someday, and I’ll let you know in a subsequent blog post!
In 1938, the planners in Nazi Germany know that war is coming. They are eager to acquire the atom bomb.
They are working against Allied governments, operating both in Germany and abroad. (And not all of the Reich’s accomplices are German nationals.)
A group of ordinary Americans and Germans are forced to choose sides. Their choices will lead them into a web of betrayal, murder, and espionage.
Their paths meet in Cairo, Egypt, where the Reich is hunting a fugitive atomic physicist.
The main characters:
Betty Lehman is a 19-year-old girl from Dutch Falls, Pennsylvania. Her family is active in the German-American Bund. Betty has been recruited to betray her country in the service of the Reich.
Rudolf Schenk is an undercover agent of the German Gestapo. He wants to do his duty. But can he abandon his last shred of conscience?
Jack McCallum is an American treasure hunter in Cairo. He falls for two women: one who is working undercover for the Third Reich, one who is fleeing the Gestapo.
Heinrich Vogel is a physicist who fled Germany for Egypt. He and his young adult daughter, Ingrid, face a daily game of cat-and-mouse with the Gestapo. His goal: to reach Britain or America before the Gestapo reaches him and his daughter!
Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s main subscription ebook reading program. Kindle Unlimited gives you virtually unlimited (hence the name) reading privileges to a wide variety of titles, for a low monthly fee.
Not every title listed on Amazon is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Literary fiction from the big New York publishing houses generally is not included. You likely won’t find the latest Jonathan Franzen novel in Kindle Unlimited anytime in the near future.
Kindle Unlimited is heavy on genre fiction. This means: romance, space opera, LitRPG, fantasy, and horror.
I have a fair number of horror titles in Kindle Unlimited. I write supernatural horror, in the tradition of Peter Straub, H.P. Lovecraft, Bentley Little and E.F. Benson.
And yes (I know this sounds a bit pretentious) Stephen King. I have achieved barely a gazillionth fraction of King’s commercial success. But his formula of character-based, fast-moving horror is always on my mind when I sit down to write a horror tale.
What kind of horror don’t I write? If you want splatterpunk, or “extreme” horror (aka “torture porn”), then you should skip my books and stories. I have no interest in writing horror fiction that is endlessly grim and/or sadistic. My horror fiction is more akin to the campfire ghost story.
Below are the horror titles that I presently have enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. This means that you can read them for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
To view one of these titles on Amazon, simply click on the image of any book, or any hyperlink below.
(Don’t have a Kindle Unlimited membership? Click here.)
A college student takes a walk down the most haunted road in rural Ohio for a cash prize. This is a “haunted road” story, basically a tale of being stuck on a cursed country road at night. Ghosts, evil spirits, and hellhounds abound. Also, an evil witch that inhabits a covered bridge.
A coming-of-age story set on Halloween night, 1980. This is a tale of supernatural events in the American suburb. A classic horror tale for Generation X.
The year is 1976, and the Headless Horseman rides again. This coming-of-age horror thriller is sure to please readers who appreciate character-based supernatural fiction with lots of twists and turns.
The basic idea is: the ghosts of American history coming back to haunt Middle America in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. (And yes, I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial, although I was rather young at the time.)
In early 2016, I read an article in The Economist about the luk thep “spirit dolls” of Thailand.
Manufactured and sold in Thailand, these are factory-made dolls with a unique sales point: each doll is supposedly infused with the spirit of a young child that passed prematurely.
The luk thep are intended to bring comfort to their owners. (They are marketed to childless women.) To me, though, the whole idea sounded rather macabre.
And I couldn’t help thinking: what if one of the dolls was infused with a child spirit that wasn’t very nice? What if that same doll ended up in the possession of an American woman who happened to visit Thailand on a business trip? Luk Thep is a fast-paced ghost tale that spans two continents.
Looking for horror stories you can read online for free?
While I recommend Kindle Unlimited for fans of horror fiction and ebooks, I should also point out that I have a number of horror stories you can read online here for FREE.
From classic ghost tales to creature features, you’ll find a considerable range. Check them out!
I’m not sure how 40 years went by without me seeing Commando (1985). But I finally caught it last night with my YouTube Premium subscription.
Commando stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a retired military operative, who is called into action when a group of international bad guys take his daughter hostage.
It’s a very basic plot, with a lot left to assumption, or the viewer’s imagination. This is pure 80s escapism, and the film suffers somewhat from the production values of that era.
On the plus side, there are no boring moments in the 90 minutes that it will take you to watch Commando. The movie is a lot of fun, in the same way that the A-Team and Magnum P.I. were fun in the 1980s.
There is no romantic subplot in Commando. Rae Dawn Chong, however, provides a solid performance as Schwarzenegger’s sidekick (and, at one point in the movie, his pilot). The 12-year-old Alyssa Milano, who was decades away from becoming annoying and political, appears as Schwarzenegger’s daughter.
The X feed Super 70s Sports has the following to say about the late Merlin Olsen (1940 – 2010):
“I miss Merlin Olsen. A true renaissance man who could kick your ass, eloquently break down exactly how he did it, then send you a thoughtful bouquet of flowers as a gesture of goodwill.”
I miss Merlin Olsen. A true renaissance man who could kick your ass, eloquently break down exactly how he did it, then send you a thoughtful bouquet of flowers as a gesture of goodwill. pic.twitter.com/rLxImgSPtR
I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but most Gen Xers don’t remember Merlin Olsen as a professional football player. Olsen played his last game in the NFL in 1976. This Gen Xer was an 8-year-old third-grader then.
Most of us do, however, remember Merlin Olsen in his post-NFL acting career. Olsen portrayed Jonathan Garvey on Little House on the Prairie from 1977 to 1981. In this secondary role, he was the “male buddy” figure for Michael Landon’s starring role.
My childhood household had one television, and my mom loved Little House. So we of course tuned in every week. I didn’t love this show quite as much as my mom did, but I didn’t exactly hate it, either. It was pleasant enough television for that pre-cable era, when most TV shows were written to the broadest audience possible. Little House on the Prairie was written and billed as wholesome family fare, with all that label implies, both for better and for worse.
I recall watching Olsen on Little House on the Prairie for several years, perhaps, before my father mentioned, apropos of nothing, that Merlin Olsen had previously been a professional football player.
My research tells me that he had quite a career in that capacity. But I, like most Gen Xers, will always think of him as Jonathan Garvey.
This past week marked the 40-year anniversary of the release of Back to the Future on July 3, 1985.
I saw the movie when it was new. I enjoyed it; but I never thought that this was a film that would be remembered four decades later.
But hey, I was 17 years old in the summer of 1985. What did I know?
1985 theatrical release poster
One of the forgotten facts about the movie is that Disney originally rejected it. The dealbreaker was the subplot in which Marty McFly’s mother becomes infatuated with him during his time in 1955. Disney execs didn’t like the incestuous plot twist.
And it struck me as a little strange at the time. Never mind that this is not the sort of scenario that anyone is likely to encounter in real life.
Whether Disney was right to reject the film or not in the 1980s, herein lies a measure of how much Disney—and the movie business—has changed since then. As we all know, Disney is more than happy to let its freak flag fly nowadays.
Following the passage of President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”, Elon Musk has launched his America Party.
The details of Elon’s latest project have yet to fully crystallize. But given his criticism of the deficit-increasing aspects of the Big, Beautiful Bill, we might reasonably assume that fiscal conservatism will be a cornerstone of the new America Party.
I am torn in regard to third parties. On one hand, neither the Democratic nor the Republican party of the present era reflects my political and philosophical beliefs.
On the other hand, I remember the election of 1992. In 1992, Ross Perot’s third-party bid for the White House handed the presidency to Bill Clinton with 43% of the popular vote. There is reason to believe that had Ross Perot not run in 1992, George H.W. Bush, the incumbent Republican, would have been reelected.
There have been many attempts in US history to establish a viable third party, and all of them have ended similarly: as nonentities or mere spoilers. In 2004, many Democrats argued that the distraction of Ralph Nader’s third-party candidacy kept the John Kerry/John Edwards ticket from winning. They may have had a point.
Democrats may also have had a point about Jill Stein and the Green Party, helping Donald Trump win the White House in 2020 and 2024.
Third parties are a wonderful idea, in the abstract. They appear to perform a useful function in Europe, where the parliamentary system is the norm. They don’t work so well in the American system of government. This has been the case ever since the days of the first third parties, back in the 1800s.
I am therefore pessimistic about the prospects for Elon Musk’s America Party. It will probably have an impact—as yet another third-party spoiler. Probably—but not necessarily—the America Party will siphon votes from Republicans who are disaffected with the MAGA movement, splitting the conservative-leaning vote in 2028 (assuming that the American Party doesn’t fizzle out before then).
Third parties mostly disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s. The few that did make blips on the radar, like John Anderson’s independent bid in 1980, were very small blips, indeed. (John Anderson took a mere 6.6 percent of the popular vote in 1980, and zero Electoral College votes.) The modern American appeal of third parties didn’t really gain momentum until the 1990s, when the Cold War order was collapsing, and this Brave New World of ours was beginning to emerge.
***
When I was growing up, things were pretty simple:
If Republicans were in power:
Taxes would probably go down.
Businesses would face fewer regulations.
Defense spending might increase.
Spending on some social programs would go down.
If Democrats were in power:
Taxes would probably go up.
There would be more regulations for businesses to contend with.
Labor unions would have more clout.
Defense spending might decrease.
Spending on most social programs would increase.
That was it.
What about abortion? Yes, abortion was a divisive issue forty years ago, too.
But during those moderate times, the two sides had arrived at a centrist compromise: abortion would be often debated but basically legal, with some reasonable restrictions. In those days, most of the real debates about abortion concerned the definition of “reasonable restrictions”.
(Nowadays, of course, “centrist compromise” is a dirty word. Ergo, the left now wants to elevate late-term abortions to the status of a national sacrament. Republicans, meanwhile, want to ban all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Both sides are nuts.)
But what do I know? Elon Musk’s America Party may succeed, and usher in a new American golden age, of fiscal conservatism at home, military restraint abroad, and a mind-your-own-business approach to social issues.
When I was in junior high in 1981, everyone was talking about Ozzy Osbourne.
We were too young to remember when Ozzy was the lead singer for Black Sabbath (the band that finally fired him in 1979). But we all liked Blizzard of Ozz, and Diary of a Madman, the two solo albums of his that were then available.
Back then, we bought them in vinyl, or maybe cassette. There were no lame streaming platforms in 1981. In 1981, Taylor Swift would not even be born for another eight years. It was a grand time, indeed.
There were concerns about some aspects of Ozzy’s persona. His music, like that of Black Sabbath, had a quasi-occult vibe. That was typical for heavy metal music of the 1980s. On at least one occasion, Ozzy had bitten off the head of a (already deceased) dove. That was not so typical, even for heavy metal artists.
I still like Ozzy’s music. But as is so often the case with still-thriving Boomer artists whom I discovered in my tender years (like Stephen King, for example), I have a strong preference for the early portion of Ozzy’s oeuvre. And even that is something I have to be in the right mood for.
I never tire, however, of my interest in Ozzy the individual. A few years ago, I watched several of Ozzy’s reality show series with my dad. I could never get my dad to listen to Ozzy’s music back in the 1980s; but he liked Ozzy the reality show star.
Now 76 and beset by health issues, Ozzy is closing out his long career. This weekend marked his final solo performance. Not bad, for a man whose first stage performances date back to the late 1960s.
My maternal grandfather was a World War II combat veteran, and I never grew tired of listening to his stories. Military history remains one of my favorite subjects.
I recently discovered the YouTube channel of Offizier Amira, a young woman who explains various topics in the history of warfare.
Amira doesn’t have many videos out yet, but she appears to specialize in German weaponry. Below is her video on the WWII German Panzerfaust.
Of course, there is no shortage of online content about World War II. But Amira also covers the military of East Germany. Since I can remember when East Germany was actually a going concern, this one particularly interests me:
Amira is obviously easy on the eyes…always an advantage on YouTube. But she also has a lot to say. If her channel gets more men interested in history instead of mindless spectator sports, so much the better.
You can find Offizier Amira’s YouTube channel by following the link at the bottom of each video.
