Crotty's report to shareholders on his 66th rotation around the sun.

Crotty delivers his annual report, June 14, Flag Day, DJT's birthday. It is accompanied by a 50 miniature toy gun salute. Read it and be glorified in the mind of Allah.

I write to you from my LA safe house on this, my 66th rotation around the sun. Last December, an insidious hemorrhage tried to take out Crotty Central Command. I suffered mightily from the massive spread of toxic blood across many sectors of my brain matter. I couldn’t speak. I lost all moorings, all tentacles connecting me to planet Earth. Most of all, I lost my sense of humor, and my desire and ability to reach out to others. It sucked. This was on top of an ischemic stroke that occurred two and a half years previously. Although I am not fully recovered, far from it, I have regained some use of my cerebellum—enough to deliver this annual report to shareholders—though the necessary act of lifting weights is an excruciatingly difficult chore.

To our paid subscribers, we praise Allah and may Heaven reward you with an endless stream of good tidings. To those coasting along on a free subscription, it's clear that I haven’t done enough to justify an upgrade to the eternal bliss of a paid subscription. Hopefully, my plugs of Oklo (OKLO)—they make small modular nuclear reactors—Unusual Machines (UMAC)—they repair drones—not to mention Palantir (PLTR)—their software allows us to track the bad guys in a haystack—will change your calculus, although I didn’t say that! Having made millions off my early recommendation of Palantir, you’d think a person would pay the paltry sum of $8 a month for a paid subscription. However, our understanding of the subtle contours of gratitude is lacking.

As we look forward to another year on Planet Crotty, we are reminded of a few things:

ONE: There are forces out there right now that seek to deprive you of your ability to speak coherent English, let alone program AI, so please take care of your health. Check your blood pressure daily, walk at least 10,000 steps a day, eat plenty of leafy greens (dandelion greens, mustard greens, turnip greens) and whole grains (brown rice, millet, quinoa), and reinforce with a daily regimen of baby aspirin, CoQ 10, green tea, Lion’s Mane, Omega 3’s, St. John’s Wort, and, if you require it, Losartan and Rosuvastatin, plus a special substance bought at Harbin Deer Antler, near Monk Space, in K-Town. It’s called Bu Shen Zhuang Yang. It’s a miracle worker. Tell them Crotty sent you. They won’t understand what you are talking about.

TWO: Stay out of politics. It’s bad for your health. Amidst excellent pit stops across the fruited plain––the Everglades, the Jacksonville Pier, the Kingsley Plantation, Mar-a-Lago––The Crotty Farm Report provides you with all the critical information you need to navigate today’s political surreality. I wrestle hard with the big issues, so you don’t have to. It’s easy to be misled in the current Comms War environment—No Kings! Say what? In most situations, you have only a limited amount of information to assess what’s going on accurately. It’s best to lie low and trust a true insider like the Crotty, and not get your heart rate out of whack tracking the latest X post.

If you are greatly upset at the current regime, it will be gone in just over three years. In four years, we will return to the previous way of doing things—half-baked, indulgent, sloppy, but with everyone much less hysterical. Americans prefer mediocrity to the horror of complete solvency. Mark my words.

THREE: Purpose. It’s essential. Mind you, I don’t have a purpose. Every year, it gets harder to find, as the customary uses of one’s time get exposed as shallow and pointless, as no good deed goes unpunished. But every day, over the customary matcha, I beseech Allah to grant me purpose. And I am pretty sure that my prayers will be answered in the 2026th year of our Lord. After all, 2025 was marked by the glorious sale of our domain name Monk.com.

Now for some special birthday commendations. Best burrito: Tacos 1986 in Los Angeles. This is authentic Tijuana street food, as it was intended to be. They keep the menu simple and gringo-friendly. And the chip and guacamole comes with giant tostadas, not the measly little chips you get at your standard Mexican joint. The almighty burrito fuels the Monk enterprise, and there is none better than the friendly Tacos 1986–-incidentally, the year that Monk Magazine was born.

Best pancake: the Baked Buckwheat Pancake at the groovy, edgy Friends and Family in East Hollywood. Served with blueberry compote and real maple syrup, this is a marvel of lightness and goodness.

Best burger. Is there really any argument here? For the 9th year running, the winner is the inimitable Block 16 in Omaha. You have to deal with an order-taker with a honkin’ huge metal thing running through his septum, but the dude is friendly and the Block Burger is to die for, as is the Dragon Wrap––comes with wild caught fresh sockeye salmon, seitan, or tempeh.

Best urban park: Chalco Hills Recreation Area. Twelve miles west of downtown Omaha, the 1,186-acre Chalco transports you to another world. The massive Griffith Park in L.A. and Forest Park in Portland were hands-down winners for years, but something about this subtle, carefully curated urban oasis gives it the surprising edge. Here, amidst indigenous prairie grasses and the large and beautiful Wehrspann Lake, you are serenaded by wild turkeys, deer, Canadian geese, and the occasional skunk, not to mention a fantastic variety of birds. Most people come to Omaha for the zoo, the impressively redesigned Heartland of America Park, and the College World Series. They never experience Chalco. That’s a shame because it’s a small-bore wonder.

The best urban thoroughfares, such as Abbot Kinney in Venice, Alaskan Way in Seattle, the Embarcadero in San Francisco, and the bucolic walk to and along Larchmont Boulevard in Los Angeles, are hard to beat. But let’s not even debate it: the High Line in New York City gets the nod. From the Meatpacking District to Chelsea to the gobsmack thrilling expanse of the Hudson Yards, the High Line meanders above the New York matrix through green space, parkland, and a rail trail created from a former New York Railroad operating on Manhattan’s West Side. The innovative architecture that has emerged along the High Line is a model for urban planners of what can be achieved when one puts their mind to it. A lesson that lesser cities like Omaha have yet to learn, with their cookie-cutter apartments and boring high-rises.

The Crotty 66th birthday celebration in L.A. was a hoot, with highlights that included fictionary—can you define bipennis and smuth?—randomly exploding balloons, and an extraordinary $120 cake from Sweet Lady Jane’s on Larchmont. The cake was named The Beverly. I took it as a nod to my late mother. About 18 people came and went through the evening, paying homage to Crotty and earning lifetimes of Buddhist merit in the process.

As for everything else, be well and be happy as you negotiate an endless universe of no meaning. But that is liberating. You can make your own meaning! You can get up and enjoy every day as if it were your last. And the way things are going, it just might be!

As we hurl headlong towards the apocalypse, rest assured, you will have the Crotty Farm Report to guide you every step of the way.

Here’s to a fabulous remainder of 2025 and a glorious 2026.

In the bonds, your captain,

The Crotty