American Dreamland

the first message of 2026

I turned off paid subscriptions for a while. I haven’t been updating consistently, and it felt wrong to take your money. (It hurt, too, to watch the cancellations roll in from the people who did notice I’d been taking their money for nothing.)

Some or all of you may already know: my father passed away suddenly in December. He had gone into the kitchen for a cookie, then disappeared into his home office for a phone call—he was arranging a surprise for my mom, hired wait staff for Christmas Eve dinner, one of the biggest dinners our family would have hosted—and then he died.

It took fifteen seconds. We found him within just a few minutes.

The waitstaff called back 11 times in the intervening two days. I thought they were debt collectors. Finally, I picked up and yelled, “He’s gone! Stop calling!” That’s how I learned what he’d been doing. They were trying to confirm.

And in the corner of my eye, on his bookshelf: Irish Folk and Fairy Tales by W.B. Yeats.

Every night I dream about him. In one dream he hands me a Wendy’s Frosty. I tell him: I knew you weren’t really dead. You’re here—I just didn’t see you. He tells me: No. I’m gone. And I won’t visit you again if you can’t accept it.

The next night, the same: You’re not dead, are you? No, he can’t be. But I saw his body. Who was that, then, if he’s here, with me, alive? I hear him call my name—Katya, Katya—I wake at three, at four, to a whisper, “come here, quickly, Katya!”

And there is crying. Constantly, from somewhere, this wailing.

The Saturday before he died, I woke at three in a cold sweat. There was a woman weeping. Right beside me, close enough that I could feel the air move. I thought: this is a bean sídhe. Before me, as though projected on the dark, the words: Your uncle has passed away.

So the next morning I called my uncle and invited him to breakfast. He was fine – confused by the sudden hospitality, but fine. He couldn’t come. So my dad came instead. We had breakfast. My son was falling asleep in his stroller. I ordered all sorts of food nobody liked. But it was nice.

And then Sunday came, and Monday, and Tuesday.

My father was gone.

I had heard the wrong message. The bean sídhe hadn’t come for my uncle. She had come for my father.

It’s been hard to write. Mostly it feels silly to care about the things I usually care about and surely will care about again soon—racing to have whatever take before anyone else, to be the first to predict who’s up and coming, the cloying desire to be original (to me, a proxy for being popular), the incessant need to correct whoever about whatever minutia, playing fence-sitter so convincingly no side wants to claim me, not even myself.

I have, though, been reading. A lot more than I have in a long time. My favorite so far has been The Moviegoer. And, somehow I had never read The Bell Jar, and I liked that too, though I felt nothing for Esther. I’m too old now, I think, to understand her character. For Binx, though, I felt quite a bit. I felt like I knew him. Like I’d met him before. For two days I wished I were in Louisiana, wandering Gentilly, on the playground, by the water.

Before that I was in North Korea. I couldn’t stop reading books about it: Nothing to Envy. Without You, There Is No Us. Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee. I tried Yeonmi Park, but by then I’d read enough.

Anyway. I’ll be resuming the call-in show this week, tomorrow, January 8^th, 7:30 PM Central. We have a name, instead of just “The Call-in Show.”

American Dreamland. The Computer Room has closed its doors.

You can find us here, on Rumble, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts—but first and foremost, while I’m getting set up, here and X. This week’s theme is 2026 predictions.

What do I predict for the year ahead?

I don’t know. Like everyone else, the slow waning of social media, of “cash-in-able” clout. Not the death of the Internet, but the death of the Millennials’ Internet, of the Millennial Internet Personality. In cities like LA, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, we’ll remember what life was like before Covid. We weren’t always this online—no matter what the “anti-tech” social media personalities would have you believe.

Maybe there will be renewal of concern about climate change, or a new illness, or a catastrophic solar flare. Or… maybe some good news is on our way.

I hope you call in and tell me your predictions.

But I don’t want doom. So many people email me, text me, DM me with doom. The rent’s too high. The country’s finished. Mama doesn’t love me and never has. AI is going to take all our jobs.

You yourself, Katya Ungerman—my real name, the name my parents gave me, always, somehow a secret, a slur!—are a failure.

No more, please.

Tomorrow, tell me what you’re looking forward to. Tell me what might be good in 2026. What are you excited about?

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