Derek Maine
6.3.26
For God’s sake just tell me who wins the war. I did this all to myself.
6.4.26
If I could do it all over again I would pass. Who wouldn’t?
6.7.26
To celebrate 250 years we will have a cage match on the White House lawn and a divisive, mean-spirited political speech. Seems fitting.
Iran is firing on American military bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Wednesday, confirmed, sides exchanged fire. Iran accuses America of violating the ceasefire.
6.8.26
Iran fires missiles at Israel tonight after Israel struck the suburbs in Beirut. The ceasefire holds. Dear Leader walks off the barn set, hits his head on a mic trying to avoid hay bales in a belligerent national television interview. The markets tomorrow morning may crater. I am snugly in the woods but the bugs are swarming my cabin. The problems of the novel are being solved. I am grateful to be in the woods with my dog and the lightning bolts. Tomorrow: a summer haircut, hand edits at Virlie’s Grill, a trip to Circle City Books & Music, and much walking. Tonight: Sun Ra, sleep. My May column came out today. I am still employed.
6.9.26
I did none of those things. I wrote my ex-wife a letter instead, bought a stamp, and shipped it up to Baltimore. Before she left I confessed covering the wars was driving me to the brink of insanity and my novel even further. I told her I couldn’t tell which was worse, what beast may come. She said I was crazy before the war and before the novel, and she thought I was likely confusing the two constantly. She asked me if I ever considered spending time in the real world, and I regretted telling her about the munitions factory last month. She hated the King’s Motel and said that was her real reason for leaving. I told her I hated it too, and that was exactly why I had to be there. I am on assignment, I said. She looked at me with pity. “Some people,” she said, “spend their whole lives running from who they are.” I didn’t know what it meant then and I don’t know what it means now. So I wrote her a letter and asked. I made sure to put my room number at the King’s Motel on the self-addressed stamped envelope I provided.
Music played on the front lawn of the White House, a soundcheck for the upcoming cage match, while America bombarded Iran with air strikes anew.
6.10.26
A second day of strikes against Iran.
6.11.26
We will strike Iran again after the SpaceX IPO. This administration is a market-based administration. No settlement deal. Dear Leader promised we would invade Iran and take control of Karg Island and take over their oil supply and revenues and it was all starting tonight. A few hours later he announced a settlement deal was close and he would cancel the imminent destruction. It’s not even good theater and I am being paid (well) to write about it (half-assedly).
6.12.26
The Ukraine war (my initial military beat) has changed significantly in the last few months. Some stats: after the initial invasion in February of 2022 (and including Crimea which was taken in 2014) Russia controlled approximately 27% of Ukraine territory. Counter offenses by Ukraine pushed the percentage down to about 18% by November of 2022 where it has mostly held. More than one million Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the 3.5 years just to hold this land. The pace of Russian casualties has increased this year, roughly 35,000 every month. Ukraine casualties have been even worse per-capita. 600,000 total killed or injured for Ukraine, or about 7% of available fighting age citizens. Russia has lost 3% of their fighting age citizens, but for the first time in the war they are losing them at a rate they cannot replenish.
“The war was brought from Russia and it is to Russia that the war must be pushed back.” Ukrainian President Zelensky. Zelenskyy. From Kiev. Kyiv. Declared in March of 2025. Ground counter offensives ended. Too casualty intensive for small gains in territory. Asymmetric, long range (William Vollmann’s article in Granta last July Drones and Decolonization explains it all much better than I can. I am a wartime author, William Vollmann is a reporter and one of America’s finest novelists and moral thinkers in this or any other age). Drones, basically.
I have timed, but not executed (it’s too early for reasons related to volatility and rules) my short position against SpaceX. There will be a new vibe shift this year. I can feel it. We all can. Something about to come crashing down. We’re all just wondering when. We’re all just wondering how. We’re all just wondering if we’ll be ok. A very few very weird dudes are taking all the money and either building elaborate bunkers or trying to escape the planet. The one who funded the New York art scene for a few summers moved to South America. The man has taste, we give him that. A sense of style, if you will. The last president’s son, a former crackhead and hooker addict, never visited Ukraine “for company business” during “his tenure” on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company. I have reached out and asked him to draw the cover to my second novel, Wartime Author. He has not yet responded.
Neither Russia or Ukraine are in the wartime World Cup. The United States and Iran are. Dear Leader says a deal to end the war will be signed tomorrow and the Strait of Hormuz will be opened immediately thereafter.
6.14.26
On Dear Leader’s 80th birthday, a deal is signed with Iran to end the war and a cage match is held on the front lawn at the White House.
Screams of joy outside the King’s Motel tonight as the local hockey team wins the Stanley Cup. Dear Leader turns 80, surrenders to Iran, weakens an empire, China rising, Australia defeats Türkiye 2-0, Germany defeats Curaçao 7-1, Japan and Netherlands tie with two goals each, Ivory Coast defeats Ecuador 1-0, and I do not watch the UFC fights on the White House lawn. I have no interest in wrestling, I stay true and loyal to the sweet science. My editor seems happy with me. He asks about organizing a reading. It has been dreadfully, deadly hot here and I coughed up dirt for two hours outside a BP station out in the country earlier today delivering hashish and benzodiazepines to Captain Jason. He has taken up residence in the country, out near Federal Correctional Complex Butner and is keeping a low profile until some district attorneys change over in the election in November in Key West.
6.15.26
The Iranian national team arrives in the United States for the wartime World Cup only hours after the peace deal was reached. It will be signed, in ink, in Switzerland, on Friday.
America surrenders, pays Iran $425 billion of our citizen’s treasure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Nothing was gained, and the world is less safe and more expensive. All sanctions are lifted against the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.
The $40M dollar restoration of the reflecting pool making the water “American flag blue” lasted one week and one image before an algae bloom turned the water a puke green, much worse than before. The image is the thing.
The honor guard, the advertisements, the violence. There are emblems and capitulations everywhere for the eyes to see. Encapsulating our country in snow globes to sell on the seashore. I am deciding between beach towns at the moment. My eyes are filled with candy. Embarkments find me at every pass.
6.16.26
“This is great for the American family,” Dear leader begins his surrender song, assuring.
6.17.26
What if we just become the best at soccer, randomly, during the century of American humiliation?
The “end” of the war is a sixty day Memo of Understanding whereby if Iran lets the ships through the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days (mid-August) then the United States will pay $425B and immediately lift sanctions. After sixty days Iran can charge a toll with no conditions. Dear Leader says we have to do it, and he says if Iran causes problems then he will bomb the shit out of them again and he says we will bomb them even harder and harder, harder still until all their buildings fall down. There is a summit happening. The World Cup. Co-Hosted by best friends America, Mexico, and Canada. In fact Columbia scored just now against Uzbekistan as I type. President Zelenskyy is at the summit, and Dear Leader, the French leader, others. I have no eyes or ears there. Soon my attention must shift, and my editor says to cut the stuff with the algae. “It’s too obvious.”
Good encapsulation of our times, both the visual and my editor’s stupid opinion. The times we live in. Too obvious.
6.19.26
Israel attacks Lebanon and Iran immediately closes the Strait of Hormuz and ends negotiations with the United States. The $425B capitulation gift and 60 day ceasefire was scheduled to be signed, sealed, and delivered today in Obbürgen, Switzerland. Iranian officials refuse to participate at this hour.
I called the courier this morning to get the latest on the failed Iran deal and some bets for the World Cup. He is headed to Rome on a reconnaissance mission. “Rome, Georgia,” he adds. “And I’m late.” He hadn’t gotten out of bed. He was considering it. I told him I hadn’t either but was not considering it at this time. We parted with kind words, blessings exchanged.
I refuse to rise until the Strait is open! Safe passage for our maritime marines!
The United States defeats Australia two nil in Seattle, on home turf, to clinch their passage through the group stage in the wartime World Cup. In our away games (Iran) we are getting our asses handed to us. But at home we still prevail, beneficiaries of another own goal as Australia, our good friends, remain excellent guests. I actually have no idea what I am talking about but I do have a scheme to stock up on gas station kratom pills before the authorities crack down and am scouting various middle school parking lots on Google Maps for potential customers. Some part of me is always with her, fighting about something insignificant or making love or watching Forensic Files. Most of me is right here in my motel bed waiting for at least two wars to end and a publisher to bite on my novel so I can move on to the next town, the next attraction, next set of problems. I’m sick of my own.
6.21.26
Everything is on pause. Israel will not leave Lebanon alone. Dear Leader says he told an Iranian official if they closed the Strait of Hormuz then they won’t have a country. Dear Leader tells the Iranian negotiators in Switzerland they will not be returned safe to their country if the Strait is not opened.
Peace talks end early. War beats on.
6.24.26
An episode behind but coming on Below Deck to advertise your adult night club is a fine enough indictment of our times.
If my editors ask, in today’s news: the war and the World Cup remain unchanged, ongoing, in group stage. I have come off two days of errands for Carol, since she couldn’t find any office temp work for me. Carol says ai has changed the world already and it’s going to some more. Carol tells me they don’t need people like you, and I believe her. I told her they never did. And yet they keep making more of us. So far I have picked up her dry cleaning, taken her two shih tzus to get some shots at a vet in a strip mall next to a nail place and twice gotten her Wendy’s. I sit at a desk and read the rest of the day. She pays me $500 which is still real money for only two days work. I call her my literary benefactor. She laughs. My real literary benefactor says I can keep that in. There were other palace shufflings, scufflings, misgivings, signs and symbols everywhere, and the two-hundred and fiftieth birthday of this country coming fast and all the world seemed to be ping pong balls lunging. Will there be a peace agreement before our country’s big birthday? Or will we still be begging to be released from the war we started and lost? I promise you this: whatever I started, I lost.
6.27.26
America strikes Iran. Iran strikes merchant vessels. The Strait is closed, no deal is signed. This month’s column, like the others, like the war, is a snake eating itself.
Derek Maine writes about the war for Farewell Transmission.