The New Toilet Paper
We will exit this tunnel soon, but we won’t see the light.
Welcome to The Experiment, where we’re minding the second rule of Zombieland when it comes to 2020. You guys go ahead. I’m gonna stay and make sure… /pop pop/… that 2020 won’t bother us anymore. Trust me, as we step confidently onto the rake that is 2021 we’re going to need some poetry from Maggie Smith.
Let me love the world like a mother.
Let me be tender when it lets me down.
This week we’re all about looking ahead at this new year with a jaundiced eye and a strong cup of coffee. Maggie Moore reads 2021’s cards in “Tarot Reading,” Charlie Bonner gets intentional in “2021 Resolutions,” Rachel Megan Barker recounts all the shows she’s rewatching in “2020TV,” Omar Gallaga wants to change how he responds to the world in “My 2021 Resolution: Judo,” Elizabeth Banicki is going to be where she’s needed in “Leyla,” and Sonia Van Meter has her latest Star Trek: Discovery recap in “Time to Face our Fears.”
And of course we remember who we’ve lost and offer recommendations on what to do (taking vaccies), read (a new poem from Maggie Smith), watch (Sound of Metal), and listen to (Tobe Nwigwe’s new album, Cincoriginals).
But first, can we go back and talk about the hot new toy for Christmas 2020?
Every Christmas there’s at least one toy that every kid wants and no parent can find. When I was a kid it was Cabbage Patch Kids. Later, I heard lots of chatter about Beanie Babies, Tickle Me Elmos, and Fingerlings. But this was 2020, a year that came with a body count. A mere child’s toy would simply not do. In 2020, the hot toy was the most 2020 thing ever: ammo.
“All he wanted for Christmas was ammo, and I couldn’t find it anywhere,” said Amy, a rancher friend of mine whose eldest son is in charge of shooting porcupines lest they imperil their beloved dog Jo Jo. “I checked six stores. Nothing online, either.”
Trust and confidence are all that prop up any economy. Our money says “In God We Trust” to endorse the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the constitution as well as an Anglo-Saxon understanding of the hereafter. A little slip of colored paper with George Washington’s mugshot is worth a dollar because some people say so and we all believe it.
But our brains also have something called “zero-risk bias” in which we’ll worry about eliminating one risk even when addressing risk more broadly and holistically will make you safer. For example, we go to war and spend a bajilliony dollars to pay people to check our shoes for bombs while spending less attention and treasure to make traffic safer.
We saw zero-risk bias in play last March during the great toilet paper hoarding. Supply chains broke down during a demand surge. News footage of shoppers carrying Costco-sized bundles of toilet paper only increased the demand, exacerbating the strain on a supply chain struggling to stand back up, leading to empty shelves, rationing, and grey-market price gouging.
That is what has been happening with ammunition all year long.
“Ammunition is the new toilet paper,” a munitions executive told American Rifleman, a publication of the National Rifle Association. “Last week I met a guy on a deer hunt who was shooting Hornady .33-378 loads. He said he’d managed to buy 20 boxes of it—expensive stuff, by the way—and in fact had bought 20 boxes for each of his guns. I asked ‘how many guns?’ and he said, ‘I have 12, so 2,400 rounds. It cost me over $3,000.’”
Every panicked stampede begins with a single step.
Every panicked stampede begins with a single step. This isn’t our first run on guns and ammo, but it is our worst by a long shot. This one started late in 2019 when Walmart stopped selling a certain kind of ammo, worrying the sort of person for whom having to pull a trigger each time a bullet is fired constitutes an infringement of his constitutional rights. Then Virginia headed into a legislative session in January 2020 promising all manner of shenanigans, such as making it harder for criminals to buy guns. So you could say that if you were the type to think that the solution to anything is more guns, you were already in the mood to buy a lot of guns at the tail end of The Before Times.
Then the pandemic hit, shutting down the economy all over the world. Manufacturing workers were furloughed. Mines were shut down. I don’t want to get too technical here, but try to follow along: Bullets are made of stuff and things, and when you stop getting and making stuff and things, you’re stuck with the supply of bullets you already have. Shortages of copper, lead, primers, and powder caused shortages of casings and all the other — again, apologies for the technical jargon — things that make a bullet go bang. And if you don’t have enough stuff and things to make your bullets, your box manufacturer doesn’t order enough staples and cardboard, so your container supplier, who probably had to shut down the factory and furlough workers as well, starts from behind. There’s your supply problem.
Then you’ve got demand, which spiked at the beginning of the pandemic, because if you’re the sort who thinks guns make things safer then you’re likely the sort to think that a deadly virus could lead to a zombie apocalypse, and then won’t you be sorry you didn’t get a gun…
Suddenly, “nearly any caliber that’ll go bang in whatever quantity is up for grabs is snapped up almost immediately,” said one gun manufacturer. People stopped wasting ammo on highway signs and beer cans as gun owners focused on maintaining enough ammo on hand. It was, wrote the NRA’s American Rifleman, “The Great Ammo Shortage of 2020.”
America had become a Chris Rock joke:
You don’t need no gun control, you know what you need? We need some bullet control. Men, we need to control the bullets, that’s right. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars… five thousand dollars per bullet… You know why? Cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders.
Yeah! Every time somebody get shot we’d say, ‘Damn, he must have done something ... Shit, he’s got fifty thousand dollars worth of bullets in his ass.’
And people would think before they killed somebody if a bullet cost five thousand dollars. ‘Man I would blow your fucking head off…if I could afford it.’ ‘I’m gonna get me another job, I’m going to start saving some money, and you’re a dead man. You’d better hope I can’t get no bullets on layaway.’
Demand surged again during the protests against police violence. If you’re like me, what you saw were mostly peaceful protests marred by some looting and police and other law enforcement agencies getting way out of hand, leading to calls to “defund the police.” But if you’re the sort to think that guns make things safer, you saw something quite different, and you were not alone.
“Where people really got serious is when they started seeing the rioting, violence and looting and they could see law enforcement was not being supported,” said one gun store owner in Sioux Falls, where the last time they had racial violence was the Dakota War of 1862. “We’re always told we don’t need guns and police will protect us, but in that case that’s not happening.”
Gun owners now saw themselves, albeit ludicrously, as society’s last line of defense against Antifa, a loosely-knit cabal of sunken-chested romantics who made the hippies look like a paramilitary force. But all the talk of defunding the police worried the gun owners.
Suddenly people were buying any sort of ammo to make them feel safer, even .22-caliber shells. My grandmother used to shoot bats in her house with .22-caliber buckshot. If you’re buying .22s to make yourself feel safer, you’re not worried about armored riot police or federales in the night. You’re worried that police won’t save you from the scary people yelling in the streets. By the time hunting season starts in the fall there’s no .22-caliber shells to be found, much less larger, more intentionally lethal calibers, all because people wanted to feel as safe from Antifa as the African explorers did in Hilaire Belloc’s satirical The Modern Traveller.
Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.
Except this time they did. If you weren’t worried about Black protestors maybe you were worried about the Proud Boys making amiable chit chat with police officers and a president who told them to “stand back and standby.” We worried, apparently with good reason, that Trump would try to stop states from counting the votes, refuse to accept a loss, and discredit election results. The gun industry counted 6.2 million new gun owners from an expanded demographic that now included many women and people of color. All year long, reservations at shooting ranges have been hard to come by, and most safety classes have waiting lists.
I thought about becoming one of them. Economies aren’t the only things held together by trust and confidence. When it came to our democracy’s seaworthiness in a shit storm, no one I knew had much of either. A friend who fought in Afghanistan told me he kept a bug-out bag packed and by his door in case everything went to hell. “I have to ask,” he texted me late this summer, “do you have a gun?” I chose to opt out of the arms race in our cold civil war.
Also, in case you didn’t notice, 2020 was an election year, except this year the quadrennial “Oh my God the Democrats are coming to take all our guns” rush was delayed until after the election was called for Joe Biden, at which point everybody jumped on the Möbius Express where “Yakety Sax” plays nonstop: Guns will be outlawed, so we need to buy guns to protect ourselves for when they come to take our guns. One letter to the editor of the Carteret County News-Times in North Carolina (“Democrat plans to end the Second Amendment”) put it best:
In the face of defunding of the police, one wonders who the Democrats plan to use to confiscate citizens firearms. Will this be NATO troops? The military?
This is where we are, an alternate universe in which America does not have enough guns and ammo. And with one company saying it has “over a year’s worth of orders for ammunition in excess of $1 billion,” we’re going to be stuck with this version of 2020 well into 2021. A run on toilet paper seems quaint in comparison, and that we enter the new year with a shortage of pasta and baking supplies is nor surprising. But America running low on ammo is simultaneously the most 2020 thing ever and something I never would have predicted.
Which brings us to the new year. If you are reading this, congratulations, we made it. The good news is that this year is going to be more predictable. The bad is why that is so. My first prediction of 2021 is that it’s going to be like 2020 for several months. Yes, the light at the end of the tunnel is real, but so is the dark all around us. In “How Dark the Beginning,” Maggie Smith writes:
Let us talk more of how dark
the beginning of a day is.
We will exit this tunnel soon, but we won’t see the light. Instead, I think that we — we heavily armed, distrusting we — are going to throw ourselves into acting as if we are safe and that there is not something else coming, such as the Monkey Syphilis Epidemic of 2023 or the Great Bread Shortage of 2024. We’re never going to be out of the woods.
But we won’t care. We’ll be too focused on acting normal to show each other how we don’t have to be afraid anymore. Soon we’ll be back to fighting about ordinary things, such as whether the next James Bond should be a Black man or a white woman.
I do, though, have enough trust and confidence to make predictions about 2021. Check back this time next year to see how I did.
A new, sustainable, for-profit business model for the news media will emerge, but people will discount it at first. It won’t be daily news.
The members of the Business Roundtable will make more progress on climate and inclusion than the United States government will.
Just as the cabaret scene and Roaring Twenties followed World War I and the Spanish Flu and disco and Studio 54 followed Watergate and the Vietnam War, a new dance club scene led by gay culture will emerge in spaces closed during the pandemic.
Downtown San Francisco will again become a hotbed of culture because rents have dropped so much that creative people can afford to live there again. The next Studio 54/Moulin Rouge/Crazy Horse will happen there.
David Brooks, Ross Douhat, and Maureen Dowd will compete to see who can harumph about the carousing the most self-righteously.
Aries’ new album will represent a big step forward in his musical development.
The next NBA finals will be the Lakers and Bucks. The Super Bowl will be the Chiefs and Seahawks. The World Series will be the Yankees against the team I will root for.
Austin FC will sell out every game.
The University of Texas at Austin Longhorns will be said to be “back.” They will, in fact, not. Boosters will publicly daydream about luring a big-name coach to Austin. This coach will leverage the ham-handed flirtations to negotiate a salary increase.
There will be fewer music venues in Austin. Counterintuitively, fewer venues means the remaining stages will be crowded with the abundance of young talent on offer in the Live Music Capital of the World — Sir Woman! Ukeme! Hovvdy! Christelle Bofale! Riders Against the Storm! Black Pumas! Walker Lukens! — and suddenly more money will flow into the local music industry.
But this won’t be a stable peace. Berlin in the ‘20s was a helluva scene. Berlin in the ‘30s, not so much. There is an overreaction for every satisfaction, and as much as I’m looking forward what’s next I’m worried about what comes after that. But I can promise you this: I won’t get a gun. As the sheriff said in The Last Good Kiss to explain why he didn’t carry a pistol, “If someone wants to shoot me, they’re going to have to bring their own gun.”
Tarot Reading
by Maggie Moore
The chaos of 2016 drove Maggie Moore to learn how to read tarot cards in 2018. In 2020, she put them away until she took them out again to do a reading for 2021.
2021 Resolutions
by Charlie Bonner
2020TV
by Rachel Megan Barker
Worst thing about the Spanish flu? There was nothing good on TV. It is axiomatic of the pandemic that we could not get through this without art — movies, music, books, and television, which is the lowest and therefore the most accessible of the arts. Wallowing in this cornucopia of streaming content is our highly caffeinated Rachel Megan Barker, who reports from London about what she’s been watching.
My 2021 Resolution: Judo
by Omar Gallaga
Omar Gallaga’s New Year’s resolution is to apply the principles of judo in his daily life. There’s just one problem: He doesn’t know the first thing about how to do judo.
Leyla
by Elizabeth Banicki
Writer Elizabeth Banicki has come realize that she belongs most where she is most needed, and in 2021 that means she’s needed at the Kaufman Kill Pen to buy a horse that no one has ever ridden and that no one wants. Elizabeth already has a horse and certainly doesn’t need this one. But after reading this, I get it, and you will, too.
S3 E11: Time to Face our Fears
by Sonia Van Meter
What happens when we use technology to raise our children? Well, when your child’s DNA is infused with radiation and dilithium, strange things are afoot at the Circle-K. For one, Burham is Trill, Culber is Bajoran, Saru is human, and Sonia Van Meter is all caps: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? The cultural parallels are clearly marked in this episode. Parents of kids doing remote learning at home will especially appreciate this one.
Connecting
by Jessie Daniels
Over the course of the pandemic, I've changed who I connect with and how I connect. It's more about whether or not there's something to say; less endless chatter to fill time and more meaningful talk with good friends and family. I hope to continue this in 2021.
Also, I usually resolve to read 50 books and always come close (42 this year), but never actually hit the 50 mark. I'm going to temper that resolution this year and resolve to read one book in particular: Forget the Alamo, which is by a guy I know. ;)
Stay safe and hope to see you soon on the other side of this.
We have merch
We’ve got a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. I’ll be there after the show. Come on by and say hi.
Who we’ve lost
This congressman-elect
How we’re getting through this
Taking vaccies
Making meatballs
Drawing all the roads in any city
Making roasted tomato and white bean stew (with ham)
What I’m reading
Hilaire Belloc: “Modern Traveller” - A sharp satire of early-20th Century colonialism.
And so the Public want to hear
About the expedition
From which I recently returned:
Of how the Fetish Tree was burned;
Of how we struggled to the coast;
And lost our ammunition;
How we retreated, side by side;
And how, like Englishmen, we died.
Well, as you know, I hate to boast,
And, what is more, I can’t abide
A popular position.
Monica Hesse: “This terrible year taught me something about hope” - Read this one, people. Read to the end.
That was 2020 for you, consistent only in its utter crappiness.
Maggie Smith: “How Dark the Beginning” - Every damn time she sucker punches me.
All we ever talk about is light—
let there be light, there was light then,good light—but what I consider
dawn is darker than all that.
Maggie Smith: “Rain, New Year’s Eve” -
The rain is a broken piano,
playing the same note over and over.My five-year-old said that.
Already she knows loving the worldmeans loving the wobbles
you can’t shim, the creaks you can’toil silent—the jerry-rigged parts,
MacGyvered with twine and chewing gum.
Barry Svrluga: “The Black baseball prospect, the police shooting and the club he never wanted to join” - Horrible story well told.
This club. George Floyd died. Breonna Taylor died. Stephon Clark died. Eric Garner died. Oscar Grant died. Adolph Grimes died. Sean Bell died. So many others died. And Robbie Tolan lived.
Lucian K. Truscott IV: “My Christmas among the spies. In the Holy Land. In 1974” - Love a good spycraft piece.
There were terror attacks everywhere, all the time. We had a hard time figuring out who was who and why they were bombing and shooting each other, but it didn't really matter. It was terrorism. We were in the middle of it all. We were writing about it. Beirut was heaven. We were both in our 20s and we had wings.
Daniel Vaughn: “What Happened When I Attempted a Cornyn’d Beef Brisket” - The best thing to result from John Cornyn’s time in the senate is Brisketgate.
I assumed Cornyn’s wasn’t a whole packer brisket from the photo, and this way I would be risking only 4.22 pounds of beef in an experiment that was beginning to feel like Pandora’s brisket.
What I’m watching
Glen Weldon quibbled muchly with WW84; I find myself disagreeing with him more these days, which I take as a warning of my own decline. Sonia Van Meter will be writing more about the comic-book sequel. Buckle up.
Ever wonder why Austin became a hotbed of environmentalism? Watch PBS’s Origins of a Green Identity and find out why, or just read the preview I wrote for Texas Highways.
I liked The Midnight Sky, the George Clooney joint on Netflix; most did not.
Sylvie’s Love, starring the incomparable Tessa Thompson, is an old-timey Hollywood movie with a twist: It tells a Black story. You will have to work incredibly hard not to like this movie. At the very least, it’s a more entertaining movie about Black musicians than Soul, Pixar’s new deal. If you liked Inside Out, you’ll like Soul. Don’t go into it expecting The Incredibles or Ratatouille.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” -Blaise Pascal
As you can see, I’ve been watching a bunch of movies during the holiday break. I liked everything I’ve seen. The Sound of Metal is something I’ll champion. It’s good. Just watch it and hide your phone.
What I’m listening to
Remember last August when we featured Tobe Nwigwe’s “Try Jesus” before it became a national sensation? Beyoncé even put it on a Spotify playlist! Now the Houston rapper is out with Cincoriginals, an album with a lot of fun hooks and dreamy beats, such as this one:
You can tell I move with sovereignty
Obviously I'm an anomaly
Every bar I spits a novelty (Yeah)
We don't ride the wave we create it (Yeah)
That's how we made it to Beyonce playlist (Yeah)
Tobe used to have some open cases (Yeah)
But now we got a crib with open spaces (Yeah)
And I got a grill with open faces far from basic
Been influenced by the city with the spaceships
Never going back to the grave shift or the slave ship
I'm 'bout to be on a 1st name basis with Beyonce
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If your new year’s resolution was to lose weight, try Noom, and you’ll quickly learn how to change your behavior and relationship with food. This app has changed my life. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works.
Headspace is a meditation app. I’ve used it for a couple years and am absolutely shocked at how much it’s taught me about managing my inner life. Try it free for a couple weeks. Don’t worry if you’ve never done it before. They talk you through it.
I now offer personal career coaching sessions through Need Hop.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some of the most fun I’ve had.
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself comes out June 8 from Penguin Random House. There is no better way to support this book than to pre-order a copy. You’re going to love reading what really happened at the Alamo, why the heroic myth was created, and the real story behind the headlines about how we’re all still fighting about it today.
