Chu The Cud

Man wasn’t meant to wake to a blaring alarm in darkness, jolted into fight-or-flight mode before the day even begins. 

The soft changes in light and temperature should be our only alarm clock, the way humans woke for thousands of years. Anything else is a jolt to the nervous system, pulling us out of nature’s rhythm before the day has even begun.

From a physiological standpoint, waking up to an alarm clock is a stress grenade. It yanks you out of whatever sleep cycle you’re in, spikes your cortisol, and primes you for anxiety before you’ve even had water. That’s not how humans evolved, our bodies respond better to waking with light, sound, and temperature shifts that happen naturally.

Our bodies weren’t built for eight-hour grinds with 29 minutes, scarfing down our food within the workplace either. 

Some days people even trade their lunch time for nap time to regenerate their energy. 

Before the Industrial Revolution, people woke naturally with sunrise or with the help of external cues, roosters, church bells, or someone literally knocking on their door.

In some towns, there were “knocker-uppers,” people paid to tap on windows with long sticks to wake workers.

The eight-hour workday is another industrial-era artifact. It was a compromise between exploitative 12–14 hour shifts and the human need for rest, but it’s still not in sync with our natural rhythms.

Studies on cultures without modern work schedules show people work in bursts, rest midday, and have social or creative periods woven into the day. Napping isn’t laziness, it’s part of how our brains consolidate memory, repair, and maintain mood.

Humans evolved to work in variable bursts, hunting, gathering, building, with rest periods in between. The rigid eight-hour block ignores seasonal changes, energy cycles, and personal variation.

The modern “alarm-to-desk” cycle was built for machines and markets, not for the human nervous system. It’s efficient for the economy, but taxing on health, which is why so many people drag themselves through the day running on caffeine, cocaine and stress.

We were indoctrinated to choose fluorescent lights and cubicles over fresh air and sunshine. 

And by the time we figure this is smoke and mirror malarkey, we’ve shackled ourselves with credit debt and lost the freedom Mother Nature once offered.

We’ve mistaken a system built for profit as a schedule meant for people, and we wonder why everyone’s exhausted, miserable and fed up.

Just pay for the prescriptions and get back in line for a chance at retirement in a hospital bed. Tomorrow, it all begins again.

The change is up to you.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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People often say, “I’ll meet you in the afterlife” or “I’ll see you again on the other side.”

It isn’t based on evidence, it’s a way of holding on to someone we’ve lost, a psychological tether to something we know nothing about, and a way to avoid facing the finality of death and just letting go.

The truth is, we don’t know what happens when life ends. Dwelling on it doesn’t get you a ticket. Just let it go.

Religions and philosophies offer many explanations, but none can be proven. Just dogma for dogmatic reasons. Just let it go.

Treat it like tomorrow and keep your stride. We don’t know the outcome of the game until the clock ticks 0:00.

The idea of reunion after death, comforts us because accepting permanent separation from an intrinsic part of ourselves is difficult. Just let it go. The memories are real.

No one wants this state of being to end, and fairytales give us hope it doesn’t. Just let it go.

When we draw the final breath, and the synapse fires its last shot, does the play go on without us, or has the curtain already fallen on all existence?

What came first, exist or existence?

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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The Clown Who Bought a Seat at the so-called Grown-Up Table.

There was a time when hearing Howard Stern’s voice on the radio felt like tuning into a live wire. Raw, dangerous, unfiltered. While living in Boston, I’d listen to the replays on the WBZN, because that’s all I had at the time. 

When I moved to L.A., I’d listen as I would drive from one studio to the next delivering videos of tv shows to producers. In a city where it takes 45 minutes to go five miles, you need a good co-pilot. 

When I was editing films at night for a company, I would have on, Howard 100 and listen to the days replay while waiting for the project I’m editing to upload or render. 

Stern was that guy. The guy who said what you weren’t supposed to give a fuck about was the establishment.

The guy who gave a microphone to the misfits and told the elites, producers and the FCC to shove it. He even considered running for political office until he was asked to show his tax returns.

A man who consistently embarrassed his wife and parents on air for ratings. Giving disable people and staffers, derogatory nicknames. Bullying women to take their clothing off and berate them afterwards for ratings. 

But somewhere along the way, the King of All Media abdicated.

Howard Stern once thrived on being the uncensored id of American radio: a guy who pushed boundaries, mocked sacred cows, and gave voice to misfits, pornstars and outcasts while gleefully flipping off mainstream respectability. 

He made his name by not caring who he offended. But then, something shifted, and not just in tone, but in foundation.

Once he remarried and started rubbing elbows with the Hamptons crowd, he traded unpredictability for polished hypocrisy. The man who used to roast celebrities became one, earning over a billion dollars during his time at SiriusXM. Now worth about $650 million. 

The “King of All Media” began sounding like the court jester in someone else’s castle. Not the one he built. 

A new CEO was appointed to SiriusXM. 

It started subtly. A softened tone here. A backpedal there. Renaming members of the “Whack Pack” so as not to offend. That was the first crack in the armor. 

You can’t build a legacy on brutal honesty, then suddenly develop a conscience shaped like a Hollywood PR firm and attack those you brought along for the ride and while they paid for the gasoline.  

When the guy who made a career mocking women, mental illness, obesity, and celebrity hypocrisy suddenly became sensitive to labels, it was like watching a punk band put on khakis and start playing brunch gigs with elevator music, acoustically without amplifiers. 

And then came, COVID. That was the tipping point. Not because of health concerns, but because Stern, who once prided himself on questioning authority and mocking the herd, became the loudest megaphone for the herd. Saying people who don’t get the vaccine should be denied hospital care and should go home and die, from behind the locked doors of his home studio. 

Screaming about masks. 

Shaming the unvaccinated. 

Preaching fear from a mansion bunker. It wasn’t brave, it was performative. A guy who once stood apart from the Politically Correct Crowd became an eager mouthpiece for the PC crowd and is now crowned, “Woke.”

Stern, once a master of mocking both sides, turned into Rachel Maddow with a better wig and plastic surgery. He wasn’t just political, he was predictably political. The kind of guy who suddenly loved all the people he used to mock, so long as they hated the same guy he did.

The comedy died. The rebellion died. Daily talks of kitty cats and TDS tirades was now common practice. And what remained wasn’t Stern, it was a neutered, virtue-signaling shell, bearing his name. A man who now takes himself too seriously like a Sage, after decades of not giving a crap and gladly collecting fines from the FCC. 

It was only a matter of time before the faithful snapped out of it. You can only gaslight your audience for so long before they remember what made you worth listening to in the first place.

He didn’t just lose the edge. He sold it off to join a group of Elite Woke Social Warriors, and people noticed.

There was a time when Howard mocked the insane, the disabled, the downright bizarre, and somehow, you knew it came from a place of strange affection. It was all part of the show. Behind the curtain, he actually cared for the outcasts he amplified.

But now, that warmth is gone.

What’s left feels cold and arrogant.

He’s no longer poking fun to include people, he’s sneering to exclude them. If you don’t think like he thinks, feel like he feels, or fall in line with his worldview, you’re dismissed as stupid, dangerous, or beneath him and shouldn’t be allowed outside your home until you fall in line with his thesis of how to behave. 

It’s not just unfunny, it’s smug. And he’s not alone. His buddy Jimmy Kimmel walks the same path: once a jester, now a self-appointed moral authority with a laugh track.

In the land of Sinaplenty, redemption doesn’t come from the hypocrisy of reinvention, it comes from owning the damage done to those you exploited on your rise to the Billionaire’s Club. 

The change is now owed to the elite who embraced him once he could afford the entry fee.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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It seems in today’s society we have lost use of moderation.

Moderation of thought moderation of consumption moderation of technology moderation of politics.

Do you think this is happening because of a plan or a scheme?

Because this cannot be truly evolving.

In an economy driven by attention deficits and consumerism, moderation is bad for business.

Moderation of thought means you’re harder to manipulate.

Moderation of consumption means you buy less.

Moderation of technology means you spend less time scrolling and streaming.

Moderation of vices keeps you in control of you.

Moderation in politics means you’re harder to herd into ideological and idiotic pens.

Extreme sells.

Outrage engages.

Addiction monetizes.

This drift from moderation isn’t a natural step in human development. It’s a guided descent into fragmentation. 

Moderation is an obstacle to those who profit from division, chaos, and dependency. The more extreme you are, the more predictable you become, and the easier you are to manipulate.

Moderation walks unseen.

Moderation isn’t passive or active, it’s common sense cloaked in invisibility, present in balance but absent from spectacle.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

All Rights Reserved.

Tony Soprano is a narcissistic, violent, lying, self-serving sociopath who betrays nearly everyone who loves him and yet, we root for him.

Why?

Because we’ve been emotionally manipulated to see complexity as justification, and dysfunction as depth. It’s not storytelling anymore, it’s psychological engineering.

What does it say about society today?

It says we’re desensitized to cruelty and numb to moral consequence. We admire power, even when it’s grotesque, because we’ve been trained to conflate dominance with success, and charisma with character.

We don’t really like Tony. We like the fantasy of getting away with everything. Getting our way.

We like watching someone break all the rules without paying the real price. That’s the seduction.

How does it all end with Tony? We will never know.

No resolution. No confirmation. No redemption. No retribution. Just silence.

Because if Tony dies in front of us, the illusion breaks.

If he lives happily ever after, the moral debt is ignored.

But by not showing us anything, the writers trap us in our own projection.

And now Reality TV?

That’s not reality. That’s low-cost behavioral manipulation, a carnival of dysfunction that feeds voyeurism, numbs empathy, and lowers the collective bar for dignity.

Enjoying the name calling and fights. This generations, Friday Night Fights.

It’s a breeding ground for mediocrity and manufactured outrage, where the stupidest, loudest, most abrasive voices are rewarded with screen time.

This outrage gets clicks and shares, and clicks feed algorithms, and algorithms control what we see. Your attention is the product.

We keep watching, because we’ve been programmed to from childhood.

Because distraction feels better than introspection.

If people stayed entertained, you don’t have to keep them thinking. They do the thinking for you.

What Tony Soprano reveals, beneath the gabagool, prosciutto and panic attacks, is that his character believes we’re not rooting for him…

But he’s wrong, we are.

We’ve outsourced our moral compass to writers’ rooms HBO and Netflix queues.

And the compass isn’t broken.

It’s been purchased long ago with your soul, to consume the poison we consume everyday.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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Why did you want to become a Freemason?

Networking? Riches? Fame and Success? World domination?

This is why a waiting period for prospects is a must. Six months minimum.

There should be no shortcuts as patience is one of our virtues. We shouldn’t encourage the mentality of instant gratification to gain membership.

We are not a product to be consumed; we are a path to be traveled.

When our brethren built Kings Solomon’s Temple, did they cut corners to get it built quicker?

However, in California Freemasonry, you are not required to give back the long-form proficiency, just the obligation. A choice that has backfired.

Membership in the Masons of California has declined significantly, dropping from a peak of over 244,000 in 1965 to approximately 80,000 by 1990, all the way down to around 40,000 today.

Long-form or full-form proficiency is not a formality. It’s not busywork.

It’s the backbone of Freemasonry.

It’s a test of character.

A man who truly knows his work doesn’t just recite words, he embodies the Craft.

He lives it. Breathes it. Becomes a pillar others can lean on.

In life, we all return to certain moments, and for a Mason, the memory work, the teachings, the discipline, these become a compass when we need direction. If you can’t be bothered to learn them, how will you live them?

At a bare minimum, that should be required before advancing in the degrees.

You are a representative of this ancient fraternity.

What does it say about the Craft if a Master Mason can’t answer basic questions about Freemasonry?

What does it say about the candidate that doesn’t care about understanding what he just experienced in the ritual with his guide?

Can you explain the point within a circle? The Three Great Lights? The working tools of each degree?

If the future of Masonry relied on your knowledge to rebuild it, do you have the ability and could you do it?

Or did you just memorize a few lines to get your next degree, never thinking twice about what you swore to uphold? I’ve seen many who have.

It isn’t a race to the top. it’s not a race at all.

Freemasonry isn’t about titles. It’s about transformation.

It’s not about the SWAG we can wear on the outside when we become a Master Mason, it’s about what is inside that makes us a Mason.

We’re not here to make men comfortable and lazy.

We’re here to make men better.

Do the work. Know the work.

Lead by example.

Be the Mason, future Masons can build on.

-Robert Anthony Meyers

2 time Past Master

North Hollywood Lodge No 542

c 2024 Chu The Cud

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If someone had told me that love was this painful, in the end, I would still want to experience it with you. 

– Broken Hearted. 

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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It’s great to see people finally breaking away from the brilliant idea that if you share one thing with someone, you’re expected to fall in line with everything they say, especially when that “unity” is peddled by the professional bamboozlers.

If it doesn’t make sense, it won’t unless you close your mind to reality and common sense. 

You know the type, those who wear victimhood like a crown, demand handouts like it’s a virtue, and call anyone who disagrees a bigot, a traitor, or whatever label’s trending this week. It’s not about justice, it’s about power. Their political careers depend on guilt-shaming the productive and gaslighting the skeptical.

And when you fight back with facts and truth?

They spin you as the villain. 

If you’re not with us, you’re against us and need to be eliminated through all means. 

They accomplish nothing but more division. Their real talent? Using freedom of speech to bash that very freedom, proof that liars love the First Amendment, right up until someone else uses it.

Political correctness and groupthink don’t build strong societies, they’re just communism in a Republic with a manicure.

The political pick pockets of our society.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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Don’t let perfectionism prevent you from following your dreams.

Your big ideas deserve more than endless planning sessions. Someone less qualified is already doing what you’re afraid to attempt.

Stop obsessing over making them flawless and polishing your pitch before you make the first clumsy move.

While you obsess to make it perfect people with half your talent is making strides on trash. 

Make the jump, the water is fine. 

c 2024 Chu The Cud

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There was a time…,

not so long ago…,

when television wasn’t just background noise or a solo binge. It was a ritual. A communal pulse. A rhythm that united households, neighborhoods, even entire generations.

Whether it was The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Seinfeld or Cheers, the screen would glow and the world would hush. You didn’t watch alone. You watched with friends. With family. With everyone you knew, at the same time, embraced, gasping, laughing, yelling at the screen.

Now, television is scattered across streaming services, dropped all at once, designed for consumption, not connection. Everyone’s watching different shows at different times, on different devices, two devices at once and nobody’s talking about it the same way.

Even networks know it’s over. They’re canceling shows left and right, bleeding money trying to find their footing in a world that no longer gathers around the glow of a TV at 8 p.m.

Because the truth is,

We are all in our own worlds and the social aspect of the little things we share together are disappearing.

And that’s what’s been lost. Not just the shows, but the shared experience.

The anticipation. The arguments. The laughter in the room.

The sense that, for one hour, we were all experiencing the bond together.

Maybe progress means convenience.

But nostalgia reminds us that convenience rarely brings connection.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

All Rights Reserved.