This morning a friend was flagellating herself for deploying both “sweet” and “sweetly” in the same sentence.

I’d noticed nothing untoward about said sentence. So I vouchsafed unto her a wisdom of Joe Ben’s: “Don’t be afraid of repetition.”

But my friend would not be moved. Still, the flagellation continued. As she pronounced herself “treacly.” Which, she self-damned, is “not good.”

There, I had to pause. Because “treacly”—that is a word wrong, so wrong, one I have never knowingly used, and, if I ever inadvertently have, I should be flogged. Some words should never have been born, and “treacly” is one of them. It needs to be shot at dawn, without any blindfold, and then be buried deep, deep as nine Hells, so never can it return.

I then reflected that the root of “treacly” is “treacle”—another word wrong; get thee behind me satan!—but that what they both reference is a form of molasses. And molasses is truly lord. Why the humans would besmirch, bestain, bedevil, a lord, with an anathema like treacly, is a thing that passeth understanding. Like. So much of the humans.

Molasses, I love everything about it. Black, dark, thick, sweet, rich, fragrant, sticky, clinging.

Though, true, sometimes, it can run amok. And kill people.

Some things stick with you as a kid and never really do go away. So it was with me and what is known as the Great Molasses Flood. This was when in 1919 a truly big-ass Boston molasses vat collapsed and poured 13,000 tons of molasses, traveling at 35 mph, down the streets, killing 21 people, and injuring 150. As I kid I pictured myself just blithely walking down the road, and then round the corner comes at me a literal sea of molasses, at top speed—no malice in it, but about my end. Lesson. Learned. You can prepare for anything. But you can’t prepare for everything. If thanatos wants you, it will get you. Even if it has to roll out molasses. It’s always: something. Quintessenced. Cubed.

After, in attempting to determine what the fuck?!, the humans theorized the mammoth molasses tub had been leaking since the day it was born. It wasn’t built for shit, was tested barely, and was prematurely goosed into production to “out-race prohibition.” Warning signs like “great groanings” from the tank were ignored, as was the fact people living around it were collecting “free molasses,” oozing out from here and there. It basically had a sign on its forehead reading—Big Darkness, Soon Come. But the humans, they paid no attention. They were too busy. Keeping up with the Kardashians. Getting ready for some football.

The eternally insufferable Ezra Klein is currently on jihad with what he calls the “abundance agenda,” which is newspeak for the Democrats can again reign uber alles if they just come out against rules and regulations and codes and permits and inspections and shit. Klein is such a howling imbecile I tend to knee-jerk be against whatever he is for; if he came out in favor of oxygen, I would regard it with deep suspicion. But up against him in this are such as David Sirota, who can out-howl and out-imbecile even Klein. So, it’s like choosing between cholera, and ebola.

My daughter is crippled—and I mean for all time—because the owner/builder of the house in Cherokee decided “fuck the codes, I’ll build it like this anyway.” She was specifically told, in an official Paper, to Not Do That. But then she did it anyway. And signed an official Paper, saying she had not. The (male) inspector sent out, she sweet-talked away from inspection. She was very proud of that. Until the day: Permanent Cripple, Did Come.

The personal-injury lawyer we retained said something that stuck with me, same as did the Great Molasses Flood: “Every time I go to Mexico, I thank god for the California Building Code.” Because, as he said, it’s all very fine and festive down there, but also you can take your life into your hands, just navigating a splintered sagging wooden sidewalk.

The reason why there are all these rules and regulations and permits and codes and inspections and shits among the Americans is so there won’t be another Great Molasses Flood. Klein never tires of telling us how big is his brain—bigger even than the bigly!—but apparently he has never looked in a history book. Where he would find that though “slow as molasses” is a tired truism, molasses also can race at top speed, killing everything in its path.

A discouraging thing about living this long is you witness the humans repeating the same old mistakes. The Kleagle & Co., worldwide, about “Let’s have more populist tyrants! Because that went so well in the 1930s-40s!” Klein and his klown car careening around with “Let’s go back before The Jungle! Some old-ass Great Molasses Flood—what, me worry?!”

Arthur Schopenhauer is a fellow who out-eeyored even Orwell. Which is why nobody wants to know his name. He wrote like this:

Whoever lives two or three generations, feels like the spectator who, during the fair, sees the performances of all kinds of jugglers and, if he remains seated in the booth, sees them repeated two or three times. As the tricks were meant only for one performance, they no longer make any impression after the illusion and novelty have vanished.

Maybe that’s why they built death into this place. So people wouldn’t have to go through it, over, and over, and over.

Mercy. Killing.

As, roll, molasses, roll.