Welcome To The Brunch Pit

I don’t know many writers, but those I do appear to actually care if their readers understand them.

I guess that makes total sense if you’re hoping to make a living out of it. Alas, there’s also a big hole in the ground on that path and its full of writers who, you guessed it, care if their readers understand them. I’ll venture a pretty good guess that they spend much of their day on Facebook or X bonding with their fans, answering their thoughts and ideas in the hope (probably valid) that they will buy their next book.

But when you die, your last thought will be “Jesus, did I really spend that much time on social media?”

If that’s how you want to spend your days, that’s fine by me but my God is older than yours. I worship at the altar of Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, better known to the world simply as Dante. Man, is there anything cooler in the whole of creation than just being known by a single name? Let me tell you the one single thing I found out about Dante for myself–he cared not one scratch what anybody thought.

He wasn’t trying to win me over with charm or clarity. He just pointed into the woods and said, “Are you coming or not?” So of course, I went and not because I thought I’d find any answers actually worth a damn, but because the man was writing like his soul was on fire and the only way to put it out was to walk directly into Hell and see who lit the match.

That’s the kind of commitment we could use more of don’t you think? A little less thought about your personal branding and more about walking down the steep steps to check out who is pulling your strings in the middle of the night.

And yes, yes, yes, this is in direct opposition to the other side of my brain that loves pulp, but that’s the whole point. That’s the balance. Without submerging yourself in something you don’t fully understand–like how a comet can be seven billion years old? That’s over 30 times older than the oldest dinosaur, which clocked in at a mere 230 million years ago. It’s a Mindshaker Meltdown alright.

Without big questions and answers, pulp is indeed pointless, but if you’re doing all the right things, it’s simply the other half of the whole.

Dante lived a long time ago. Even before Dean Koontz, which is pretty hard to believe. He spanned the 13th and 14th centuries and was, if you like such analogies, pretty pulpy rock ‘n’ roll in his approach. While everybody else was proving how smart they were by writing in Latin, Dante figured that was corporate bullshit and chose to write his epic poem in the common language of the people so they could actually read the damn thing and get a kick out of it.

The Divine Comedy is a tough read. I have made it through once and every now and then look at it wondering how a piece of work can last 700 years, but the larger truth is, one of the reasons I look at the book often is for the illustrations of Gustave Doré. He’s like Ralph Steadman was to Hunter S Thompson. The work is great for sure, but is most easily chewed and swallowed whole when there’s a great image attached, because we all need sugar on our doughnuts really.

And that statement in itself is just about as ironically divine as it gets:

I’m pretty sure that Tolkien stole this idea–and why not! It’s a good one…

Thus, welcome, weary soul, to the Circle of Gluttony!

Once reserved for those who gorged themselves on bread and wine, I’ve made a few updates for the 21st century. Our new residents arrive voluntarily, usually carrying smartphones, battery packs, and at least one item made from activated charcoal.

Cerberus, the Algorithm

If you squint (though not actually much squinting is required), the three heads of Cerberus aren’t that different from the three-headed beast of modern validation: Likes, Follows, and Engagement. And just like Cerberus, the algorithm doesn't care who you are—it only wants to devour your time, your mind, and your sense of self-worth. Welcome to Hell. Please rate and subscribe. Cerberus is a giant, three-headed dog from Greek mythology who guards the gates of the underworld to make sure nobody sneaks out. I don’t think I’m too far off the beaten path when I say, that’s social media all over.

The Brunch Pit

You’ll first encounter the Brunch Pit, a vast wasteland of bottomless craft pastries and poached eggs perched on edible flowers. Beware the ambient loop of lo-fi beats. It's been playing for 600 years and no one knows how to turn it off.

"But where is the food?" I asked.
"Right there," said my guide. "It just hasn't been filtered yet."

Here, the gluttons do not eat. They stage. They scroll. They rearrange. They document. And then they discard. One woman takes 47 shots of a matcha latte. A man rearranges his bacon into a Fibonacci spiral. A child weeps with uncontrollable joy into an untouched pancake stack shaped like a minion.

"Why don’t they just eat it?" I cry.
"Because then it would be gone," says Virgil, uploading another reel to his feed.

Punishment

As in the original masterwork, the damned lie in freezing slush—but here, it’s not rain. It’s a constant drizzle of lukewarm oat milk and digital validation. They are forced to scroll their own timelines forever, seeing only the meals they staged, never the joy they missed. Later, in life they can often be found being mean to animals, , leaving reviews online, planning their days via a weather app and mainlining comments on LinkedIn because well… that’s what you do in 2025.

Nope, Dante didn’t care about followers. He just wrote like his soul depended on it—because frankly, it did.

The Inferno isn’t a myth from the annals of history. It rebranded itself and lives snugly in your pocket.

Worse still, it got you to pay for it.

…he was a pretty stern looking kinda guy too.