Derek Maine
March 1, 2026
Here we plumb the depths of human misery, the shape of our national boredom.
For the second time in a week bad actors have taken control of my social accounts, this time on the convenient cusp of my new war column. I have too many things to do to pay their ransom or fight this intrusion. My glasses, for one, are broken. I have to call the glasses company and make an appointment. Life is filled with such indignities. I am also, of course, keeping a pulse on the international mood, shipping routes, airspace, the flow of capital, oil, and human atrocities. Some take to the streets to celebrate, some to protest. Reports of a school being bombed in Tehran. A council of clergy has convened, called to select the new Supreme Leader of Iran.
Outside my room at the King’s Motel, on the Lord’s Day and before noon at that, I ask a suspiciously clean, well-dressed teenaged boy, clearly lost or trying his hand at a weekend runaway, what his people on the ground were saying about the war in Iran. Instead of answering my question, he looked at me with cold, fish scale eyes, and said “There’s a healthy debate to be had, but I take the side that Clavicular was not brutally frame mogged by the ASU frat leader.” I immediately went inside my room and took more drugs.
March 2, 2026
America struck a girl’s elementary school in Iran over the weekend, killing at least 50 schoolchildren.
Operation Epic Fury. The Department of War. Everything sounds like a bad marketing slogan for a failed video game in this reactionary circus world, here in the early days of the second quarter of the century. It is impossible to follow a war on the local news these days, I can promise you. My phone is submerged in the bathtub. I am still locked out of all my social media accounts and have been since Operation Epic Fury began.
Dear Leader said the war will end when our objectives are met. The drunk Secretary of War rambled incoherently when asked what the objectives of the war are, stumbling through a mealy mouthed response of nonsense, first ignoring the question until mid-monologue he’d clearly forgotten it entirely. The largest American military operation in a generation. Objectives unclear.
Dear Leader, last night, on a phone call, says he got the Supreme Leader before the Ayatollah could get him. He said they tried twice and failed.
A shooter in Austin wearing a shirt with the Iranian flag and the words “Property of Allah” in large font initiated a mass casualty event at the center of Austin’s joyous, raucous, West Six Street, hits sixteen, three deceased (as of this hour) and thirteen injured and, the shooter, a 53 year old Senegalese man, naturalized American citizen, is killed on scene by the responding officers. A man with almost no past. In 2022 a vehicle collision in Texas. Warrants out at a home in Pflugerville.
March 3, 2026
Instructions to American citizens stranded in Israel while airspace is closed were to listen to evacuation orders and shelter in place, delivered cheerfully by the white-bearded GLP-1 goober and absolute boob Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Israel. The Italians chartered a plane to bring their citizens home.
“Objective? You don’t need no objective in war,” Charles laughed at me tonight when I suggested America’s lack of objectives in the war we just started was concerning. “War is the objective,” he told me. “Always.”
The spam calls are increasing by the hour. I turn my phone over and stare at a larger screen instead. Maps, hot zones, cluster graphs, topologies, troop movements, casualty counts sear into me. I take several doses of gummy bear drugs at once before I swallow a pill then a second. The rest of my ex-wife’s letter was thematically consistent with its first line. My war is small and over and I lost resoundingly.
March 4, 2026
There are so many insane people, delusional, just certified whackos and it’s so beautiful. These are the prophets.
March 5, 2026
For our 250th birthday, the 250th anniversary of a country, born of conquering and colonization, that still became an idea, a promise, a dream, a super power, will celebrate by fighting war in the Middle East. I have only lived 44 of those 250 years (17.6%) but most of them my country has spent tax dollars and blood in the Middle East. I have been thinking about this lately.
The people came to the Oval Office to lay their hands on Dear Leader and pray. The camera crew, the whole production. We watched so much television, in America, we became television.
I shut it all off and spend the day reading BLT, the website listing all BASE jumping deaths.
March 6, 2026
The influencers are under fire in Dubai.
March 8, 2026
There are signs of spring everywhere, even in the cracks of the sidewalks. The dogwood trees are in full bloom. You will come to understand, if you stick with me on this ride1, how important the seasons are to me. I structure my life around them.
Iran has selected the Supreme Leader’s son to be the new Supreme Leader. You will see, these things happen. The son usually inherits the father’s friends, enemies, debts public and private, and wars.
The United States will, of course, be asking OpenAI, the once non-profit large language model artificial intelligence institute, to precisely locate and kill the son.
March 9, 2026
Hundreds of young girls, schoolchildren, under ten.
They are talking about “drinking water and AI” on Bloomberg News tonight. “But first, Stacy, let’s take a look at the headlines. Of course there’s a war in Iran, we’ll get to that, but it is an election year and we had our first primary…” I hang up and eat three cigarettes. I make a Manhattan to calm myself down. I am expecting a young dame to call for my help finding her husband any day now. I put a sign on my red door, room 26, “Private Investigations.”
The rest of the letter didn’t hurt as much as the first line, which always was her problem as a writer. She’s a quipper. She quips. She listed her demands. I may have listed them here already. I forget them just now. She has every right to, of course. All these things and more are under serious consideration. I need time to consider. Space, your therapist called it.
Sudden realization that I cannot run for office.
Too much heat.
Dear Leader tells the news station the “war is pretty much over now.”
The war is done basically almost, he says. We have destroyed them. We double tapped a girl’s school on the first day, killing 165. First the children and then the parents that came running for their children. We did this on the first day of the war we started against Iran alongside Israel. Iran elected the Supreme Leader’s son, the hardline 57 year old whose wife and father were just killed by American and Israeli strikes to set off the war, on the same day of the school strike, to be the new Supreme Leader. Dear Leader says it’s almost done (basically is) but also there will be strikes TWENTY TIMES HARDER if they fuck with the Strait of Hormuz. Dear Leader does not fuck around when it comes to oil, the market, and real estate. ‘Death, Fire and Fury will reign upon them,’ he says and I believe him.
All of life, too, is energy, of vastly varied sizes and configurations, bouncing off each other, just as we bounce off each other and it is painful and beautiful, incredibly difficult, true suffering and true love, but it is a temporary dance for us souls, as we bounce off each other, our ultimate destination a return to the one soul, and we will see separateness is a cosmic illusion along with time, but a real one we feel here on earth, all of us, and a real clock we deal with on earth, all of us, least of which is our own mortal countdown, the agony, despair, hatred, and contempt we feel down here is real but we shall one day, hopefully long after I have sold Wartime Author to a publisher, reunite with all other bouncing souls as one energy, one love, unshackled from the tyranny of time and space.
March 10, 2026
“Very complete, pretty much.”
In the last few hours America destroyed ten ships in the Strait of Homuz, with Dear Leader publicly boasting more to follow. Inactive mine laying boats. And/or ships. Who knows? It’s war.
America is always the insurer of last resort. Often of their own crimes.
March 11, 2026
The FBI warns Iran may strike California with drones2.
Pentagon reports to Congress the first week of the Iran war cost “more than $11.3 billion.” Gas prices are up. There has been no regime change. California is under warning. Sleeper cells are being activated as we speak, the news screams at me. We started this war.
March 12, 2026
A Lebanese American rammed his vehicle into a Michigan synagogue. There were no injuries. Mahomed Bailor Jalloh, who spent eight years in prison for giving aid to the Islamic State, yelled “Allahu Akbar” in a classroom and starting shooting at Old Dominion University. He was subdued and killed by ROTC students. The news channel reports “the domestic terrorist was unalived by the unarmed students.”
Even our language is embarrassed by our bloodlust, necessary as it sometimes may be. Iran’s new Supreme Leader gives his first statement, not appearing on camera after being injured in the first strikes of the war. He assures everyone that Iran will not refrain from avenging the blood of their martyrs.
March 15, 2026
I have been spending my life outside of the trenches, actively avoiding the war. I bought new designer Italian sunglasses instead. A season is getting ready to turn over and I operate on a seasonal schedule. My employers know this. My bosses at Farewell Transmission are kind, supportive souls. The publisher, the top guy who sits behind the desk and everything, he calls me himself the other day and says, “It’s a twelve month contract, Derek. You can be forgiven a bad month or three. Nobody’s expecting Graham Greene. But we do need copy, we need something. You’re the wartime author, but you cannot just use the pages of this publication, and steal the time of our valued readership, to say nothing of our advertisers and various benefactors, using our space to try and sell your novel. Give me news of the war!”
The beginning of the message was quite kind and soft. By the end I was terrified. Too terrified to write. Research was out of the question. Too terrified to be jumping into a war screen. Unsettled. It’s nothing some magnesium a Klonopin and a little weed won’t cure.
Peter Thiel is in Rome prophesying about the Antichrist.
Dear Leader says we’ll handle Cuba next. He has a prominent Cuban-American in his cabinet. Iran warns the UAE to evacuate ports. America is attacking Iran’s Kharg Island, an important oil hub. Outside of a steady, healthy oil flow to China, still no shipping going through the Strait of Hormuz, choking the global energy economy. Japan, Korea are suffering. Their oil flows through the Strait. Russian oil is off-limits. Can we interest our Asian allies in Venezuelan black gold?
March 16, 2026
The Strait has never been fully closed. Numerous threats to close it, and partially closed during the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s. It was not closed during the war in Afghanistan. It was not closed during the Lebanese Civil War, the First Intifada, either Gulf War. It closed officially on March 2nd, two weeks ago. America is back, this time with Israel officially, to war in the Middle East. It likely never ends in my lifetime. America comes and kills, sows chaos, leaves a whole wake of destruction, radicalizes some, frees others, gets her dirty hands in religious, political, tribal, and regional rivalries she’s is in no position to resolve or speak on, and America accidentally strikes elementary schools twice, and America is not directly threatened by Iran. Iran is just a murderous, evil regime in a world full of them. America should know.
March 17, 2026
Twenty-five hundred American marines, boots on the ground, are headed to Kharg Island. American allies have refused to join the war. The press secretary said yesterday Iran was not a threat to America and today she said it was, or perhaps the other way around. I refuse to recall at this late hour.
Dubai arrests anyone reporting on the war, an influencer reports.
Western tax evaders are leaving their pets behind in Dubai.
March 18, 2026
I wake up to the news: Cinnabon has cut ties with “The Bachelorette”
March 19, 2026
Israel and America are targeting energy infrastructure and desalination plants in Iran. Israel is also, in its war with Iran, bombing Beirut (in Lebanon).
Iran strikes Saudi Arabia and Qatar energy infrastructure in kind.
Supreme Leader tried to kill Dear Leader, failed, and then Dear Leader killed Supreme Leader. Now he’s stuck in a war, fighting for Israel’s aims. It is a global economic crisis. Dear Leader needs to find a way to claim victory and get the fuck out. Likely the markets will force his hand.
March 21, 2026
There is war and I am supposed to be covering it. But there are so many and I’m usually tired. I need distilled water for my CPAP machine, but have been too depressed to leave my room for at least sixty hours, likely more. I am surviving on a bulk purchase of freezer pops and benzos. A modern cliche. A middle-aged divorce man with a room at The King’s Motel and a monthly column. I keep waiting to wake up and realize I am living my life.
March 22, 2026
The war in Iran is causing fissures in the downtown scene.
Dear Leader issued an official warning to the Iranian state. Iran has 48 hours to re-open the Strait of Hormuz or he will obliterate their power plants, starting with the biggest one first. 48 hours in all capital letters. From this exact time, it says, released by the White House at 8:40 pm yesterday. Everyone loves a countdown. The world stage plays out like a network reality show because America is run by a network reality show host and America always places her thumb on the world stage’s scale.
March 23, 2026
Nevermind. Dear Leader rescinds the threats mere moments before the oil market opens. Cites productive conversations with Iran.
Iran says there have been no conversations.
You would think the markets, by now, would not move at every Dear Leader pronouncement or threat. He is the Boomer’s P.T. Barnum and the Doomer’s idea of anarchy. Of course he is a thief, a liar, a conman, grifter, and is losing his mind live on television (‘and it wasn’t such a great mind to begin with,’ he’d quip), controlling an army (several at once), and now of course he is sending ICE agents to the airports five days before I take a flight to Puerto Rico. This concerns me, keeps me up at this late hour. I tend to travel with drugs. Dear Leader was in Graceland today. He signed a replica of a guitar Elvis used in his 1973 ‘Aloha from Hawaii’ concert. I forget why I am needed in Puerto Rico, but I’m sure I’ll find out when I get there.
March 24, 2026
Dear Leader announces the war is over. Israel seizes part of Southern Lebanon. 1,000 U.S. troops from the 82nd airborne are being deployed to the Middle East. The United States is also increasing the maximum military enlistment age from 34 to 42.
A present from the Iranians arrived today according to Dear Leader. It has to do with oil and gas. He does not want to say what it is. It has to do with oil and gas. It is an extremely nice prize. Now we know we’re talking to the right people, he said.
To keep gas prices down, to hide the cost of war in a midterm election year, Dear Leader lifts sanctions on Iranian oil, an estimated $14B windfall for the country America is at war with.
We don’t know who we are talking to, but we know they are the right people.
March 25, 2026
I wake up free of the war. Who am I to quibble? Who am I to argue with the man who started the war? Am I not a model citizen? Dear Leader says the war is over and we won. Excellent news. The cost of winning included, among other losses, the elementary school we bombed twice on the first day and now clear certainty that Iran does, in fact, control the Strait of Hormuz. What was once a theoretical question is now resolved and Iran’s power as a nation, in proving its ability to disrupt global trade and economics, increases greatly. We managed to kill the Supreme Leader (86) and have him quickly replaced by his son, the more hardline of the two and a man whose wife and father we just killed. Israel says the war goes on, and will go on until Iran’s military capabilities are entirely decimated. Dear Leader says the war is over, and we won. Most suspect the troops headed there will attempt to take Kharg Island over the weekend, when the markets are closed. It’s over and we won. You can just say things. You can say anything. Say it with your chest. Anyone who disagrees is an enemy and will be treated as such. Another war won for America in its continued, moral mission to make the world in its image.
Thank God for this country.
I recall screaming most of this as I was being forcibly removed from the vape shop. I recall little else of last night, and today has been spent sleeping it off. I depart for Puerto Rico in three days, basically two. I have been avoiding my editor, but he will be on my ass sooner rather than later for copy.
March 26, 2026
Dear Leader extends his deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz (again). My editors are not as pliable. My own deadline is tomorrow, regardless of the state of international shipping.
The White House official social media accounts are posting cryptic highly pixelated images of Dear Leader and his deputies. It’s almost the weekend for the war and it’s almost Puerto Rico for me.
March 27, 2026
Tiger Woods was always a tragic figure.
Iran’s missiles strike America’s Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, wounding ten American soldiers. Dear Leader demands Tiger Woods be pardoned immediately. Two of the soldiers are critically wounded.
March 28, 2026
In a cabinet meeting, amidst the backdrop of our war in Iran, Houthi rebels striking Israel from Yemen, anxious global markets, tolls for safe passage through Iran’s Strait of Hormuz, Dear Leader extolls the virtues of the humble sharpie.
My flight is boarding. Walls close in. The air pressure. An unsettling realization I have let my readers down, my editors down, and am floating through the whims of history uselessly, noticing everything, capturing nothing.
Derek Maine writes about the War for Farewell Transmission.
- the twelve contracted months I will be writing this war column, desperately hoping for a publisher, editor, or tastemaker to come along and publish my war novel on the strength of this widely read and critically acclaimed war column. ↩︎
- Possible setup for false flag op. Lucky Larry bought the WTC a couple months before they fell and made billions. It is also the only day he ever missed work. Same with Lutnick. Wild put option volume funneled through A.B. Brown, which was formerly run by at-the-time Exec Dir of the CIA, Buzzy Kronard. Mayo Shattuck, who officially ran the shop, resigned a day later. In the wake of the tragedy, the US gov’t issued terrorism insurance (TRIP) in case it ever happened again. TRIP, which covers 80%, expires 12/31/2027. Lucky Larry recently bought the second tallest building in L.A. and took out a massive insurance policy, per the TRIP clause. ↩︎
