OMGreg 101

Hello! It’s me, Greg! From the name of the site! And from some TV shows where you laugh at the news or your 8 year old learns how to use laser swords. And if you have just a minute, I want to explain what this place is and why you should stick around.

Look. It’s bad out there. You’re not imagining it. We are in a Bad Time that people 50 years from now will look at as a cautionary tale, and people 100 years from now will forget and then repeat exactly. And we all want to do something – but the truth is, nothing typed into a keyboard or read off a screen is actually going to fix… this. In fact, most of the internet is designed to help you let off just enough steam that you never actually touch grass and go make change in the world. No one by themselves can fix it.

Which is great for me, because I write jokes not solutions. But before I wrote jokes I was a seminarian, which is Vatican-speak for “guy studying to be a priest¹.” And I haven’t quite shaken the habitual pattern of looking at the news and talking a little about what it means. So somewhere, in all of this stuff, is a little touch of homily vibes. Not like judgement/fire/brimstone, more like “Hey here’s how these three bad things happening at once all have a them.”

There is a lot of humour writing out there. (Some of it by my friends who are delightful and funny!) And lots of political analysis. (Not really by my friends and usually bad!) Feels like they got it handled. I’m a comedy writer. I write jokes. (Really? This has been… less than funny so far? Are you sure this is your day job? Oh shit I’m trapped in uptalk? I can’t get out of here? Will anyone help me?) That also means I’m not going to explain to you why things are bad. You already know! You’re on Earth!

Also, not for nothing, I am an Elder Millennial, and no generation is more equipped for this moment than a group of people whose defining events of high school were unthinkable terrorism and watching WMDs vanish from the Middle East,² and then tumbled from global disaster to global disaster. Institutions break promises, and things are bad? WE KNOW, BABY!

So that’s what this is. It’s fun, or as fun as thinking about The News can be. Subscribe, stick around, drop a note if you’d like.

- Greg

1  I know what you’re thinking, “Greg, a Black Catholic priest? Does that ever happen?” And the answer is: almost never! There are less Black American priests than members of Congress.

2  Institutions are dead, our leaders are two steps behind, and most people in power are obsessed with reaching across an aisle to shake the hand of someone holding a knife. Our dreams of a bright future died before our prom date flowers did. We are the shark-eyed, pragmatic, eff-it generation that will decide what happens next.