Football season is here again, friends! The stadiums are packed with cheering fans, parking lots are full of tailgaters, and somehow I’ve once again decided the actions of a bunch of young men aged 18-23 will decide my mood on weekends for the rest of the year at minimum.

My beloved Tennessee Volunteers are in a bit of a rebuild again this year. Our quarterback is Faizon Brandon, a true freshman who looks like he’s got the potential to really make some waves this season. In his opening game against Furman, Brandon scored five touchdowns. The last QB to achieve that feat in the SEC was a fellow named Cam Newton. Continue reading →

These days, you can’t step foot outside without someone either telling you about Flock Cameras or seeing the goddamn things in public. Depending on who you ask, the controversy over Flock’s Automatic License Plate Readers and their databases are either the most heinous violations of privacy in the last 150 years or the whole mess is just a big conspiracy theory designed by blue-haired pot-smoking libertarians.

Here’s my stance on the fucking things: So what?

Yes, they take pictures of your car. Yes, they do so on a regular basis. Yes, people have been caught abusing the hell out of Flock’s searchable databases that allegedly let someone look for a white guy with a tattoo of a dead fish on his right forearm (not that anyone needs to care about such things). Yes, they’re probably tracking your every single movement.

Why do YOU care?

Let’s be honest about this. Brutally, transparently honest. The majority of you complaining about Flock cameras probably have an Amazon Echo in your home, at least one camera pointing at your face daily either on your TV or on your computer, and you probably have an Instagram page that documents everything you ate or did for the rest of the world.

You take photos on your iPhone 16 pro max, ask for directions using Apple or Google Maps, and have at least six AI bots set up in Claude or something similar to handle your emails and family schedules.

And let’s not forget how many times you’ve asked Chat GPT if a particular celebrity had “work done,” or who would win in a fight between Batman and Goku from Dragonball Z.

Most of you are using Gmail accounts and have a Twitter Premium account that gives you access to Grok, which is probably monitoring all the shit you do on Elon’s platform anyway.

And NOW you’re going to tell me you’re big mad about an invasion of your privacy?

No. You’re mad because someone with access to camera technology and AI came up with an idea, lots of police departments bought into the idea, and now you want to claw back some of your precious privacy because ACAB or something.

Guess what, muffin cakes? You’re being tracked everywhere you go. There’s Ring cameras on every door these days. You’ve got houses loaded up with more cameras than Afroman when the Adams County Sheriff’s Department raided his house. And when you go take a shit in a gas station bathroom? I’ve got news for you: they’re probably tracking whether or not you wiped.

Photo obtain via FOIL from FBI file on Seaton, Christopher.

But because a few cops tracked their significant others who were stepping out on them you think it’s okay to start sounding an alarm about how this is the technology that will send us all to hell if we don’t rid ourselves of it.

Everyone wants to pound their little fists into tables just because they don’t like the idea of someone taking pictures of them. No, they want to post that shit themselves on Instagram, TikTok, or whatever the social media shithole of choice is these days.

No, we’ve created this surveillance state ourselves. It wasn’t the Flock CEO who caused this mess, nor was it anyone from any specific federal agency. We’ve been pissing away our privacy for decades going back to when we agreed to let grocery stores track our purchases with their blessed loyalty cards just so we got a few extra cents off gas here and there.

And those of you who are just becoming privacy hawks now? You’re doing it out of fear of something you probably use daily. So chill out. It’s not as bad as you think.

So relax, pour yourself a glass tonight* and remember this: no matter how bad your week’s been, at least county executives in East Tennessee haven’t publicly stated America won’t be great until you’re hung on Main Street.

Which totally happened to someone from Flock recently.

Talk amongst yourselves and be good to each other. See y’all next time.

• Ed. Note: Bowmore 18 recommended.

People take social media way too seriously.

A few weeks ago I saw this young lady on one of my social media feeds in a great deal of distress over her neighbors. If her post was to be believed, some of them had recently mistaken her husband for a relative named “Kevin” who owed the family a great deal of money and hadn’t been home in a month or so. She was very irate that her husband (whose name was nothing similar to Kevin) was being called (a) Kevin, and (b) a deadbeat, so she tried to call the cops and get her neighbors to leave her alone. This didn’t really work and the irate neighbors kept coming to her yard asking for her husband to give them money.

Two days ago she posted photos of her and her husband on a date at a local crab shack. I posted underneath a picture of her husband “Kevin, is that you? Please call your sister. She really needs your support.” Continue reading →

By the time you read this, my son will be starting his sixth grade year in school. It’s a new school for him so he gets a half day of orientation today and a half day Monday. The first full day of school for everyone is actually this coming Tuesday in my area.

I’m so old, I remember when you actually had to start school on a Monday and go the entire day. When I was his age, we didn’t do this communist half-day bullshit. We suffered through an entire eight hours and we were proud of it. We also walked both ways five miles uphill barefoot in the snow, but that means nothing to this generation. Continue reading →

You can learn a surprisingly good deal about human nature watching game shows.

I recently saw an episode of Celebrity Family Feud where a team of very decidedly woke celebrities of color played a group that looked to be Travis and Jason Kelce’s extended family.

The question posed by host Steve Harvey was as follows: “We asked 100 people and the top five answers are on the board: What kind of music is played all hours of the day in hell?” Continue reading →

Dear Friends:

It has come to my attention that CNBC recently published a report on the ten worst states in which to live. Tennessee ranked as the worst state on the entire list.

Today I come to tell you this is not fake news. It is 100 percent true. Tennessee is the worst state in America and you shouldn’t move here. We’re full. Don’t come. Continue reading →

Friends, it’s a slow week in Northeast Tennessee. I’m writing to you on what’s turned into the first day of my upcoming ten day “staycation,” where Dr. S, I and the kids do something that we’ve wanted to do for a very long time: sit on our asses and binge watch all the best offerings our TV can muster.

Not that we couldn’t do this some other week, I suppose. One of Dr. S’s most valued colleagues is taking a trip with her family to some place called Banff in Canada. I don’t know much about Banff other than the photos I’ve seen look really beautiful and I hope she has a fantastic time.

Personally, I wouldn’t visit Canada anytime soon. They’re hostile to folks like me up in the Great White North: assholes who love central air and cable television. Canadians focus too much on things like niceness, politeness and maple syrup. Continue reading →

Dear Democrats in Maine:

Look, we can’t sugar coat things. You guys have a problem right now, and I want to help you fix it. With Graham Planter out of the Senate race now, y’all need to find someone on the double quick to take his spot challenging Susan Collins.

Allow me to throw my name into the ring for consideration.

Now I do have some drawbacks for the spot. For one, I don’t live in Maine. Second, the one thing I really care about in Maine are lobster rolls. I do love me some lobster rolls. Continue reading →

It’s hot in Knoxville, and the AC at Seaton Castle isn’t cranking since the only outlet is being used by  the another, more critical appliance, making it a bit too sultry for his usual deep Friday thoughts. Instead, an oldie but goodie from Mud Lick.

Sheriff Roy Templeton finally had a day off. He’d told Deputy Miranda, his second in command, to hold all calls for the day unless the matter was nothing short of an active shooter scenario. Settling into his easy chair, Mud Lick’s top cop prepared to open his copy of Peter Thiel’s “Zero to One” and finally let the tension in his shoulders and neck release.

That’s when a loud buzzing noise emanating from the kitchen threatened to severely damage Sheriff Roy’s calm.

“Arlene!” Sheriff Roy yelled from the living room. “What in tarnation is that blasted noise?”

“It’s the dishwasher,” Mrs. Templeton yelled back. “It just started doing this and I have no idea why!” Continue reading →

I’m living in a strange fever dream, friends. I was told no one from overseas would want to come to America by our media. We’re too extreme, too loud, too—hell, everything’s just wrong with us if you listen for ten minutes to CNN or MSNOW.

And then all of these beautiful European visitors came to America and reminded us all this country is pretty fucking badass.

We’ve had the Scots take over Boston and damn near drink the town dry. This Freddy fella from Germany has renewed my love of the American South and dined with Ron DeSantis. And the Norweigans who try Chik-Fil-A’s “spicy chicken burger” swear they’re never going back. Continue reading →