Seeking a Way Out of a Dark, Nameless Decade
I don't know how much more of the '00s I can take. Four more years is a long time.
It's really the repetition that gets to me. Suicide bomber kills n in Iraq. Hostage killed, see the video on the internet. A White House official utters unbelievable bullshit. President Bush makes a bad decision. Wash, rinse, repeat, and nothing ever gets cleaner. (See Standard Paragraph.)
The kids are all talking about the new movie, this one features brutality and sadism even more horrific than the last. I can't turn on the radio without hearing the word "torture," or the television without seeing it.
I have seen enough iPod ads, now. Yesterday, in the Embarcadero BART/MUNI station, every surface has an iPod ad on it. Literally, you cannot have your eyes open at the station without seeing a silhouette of a hip young black person listening to music on tiny white ear-buds. Do I need to write a letter of surrender to Steve Jobs, "Steve, you win. I can think of nothing but iPods. I've worked the term 'Pod-cast' into the punchlines of my jokes. I don't need one, but should I simply send you my credit card number, anyway? You decide how much to charge me for leaving my mind in peace."
Apple couldn't have come up with a better time to market what are essentially $400 Sony Walkmans with a two-year life span, as Americans will have more cash on hand that they're not spending on home mortgages that they can no longer afford, as the "American Dream" of home ownership accelerates out of reach of even the six-figure working stiffs. If you didn't buy a home in the '90s, you can forget about owning one, unless you inherit it.
The conventional wisdom is that Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide rather than live through a second term of Bush. An extreme case, for sure (he had other problems), but I'm worried whether we're all going to make it with our sanity intact. The First Sea Lord sounds more strident and angry with each post -- what happened to the jolly First Lord? Dr. X "left" to indulge a paranoid fantasy of persecution, and creates a new identity. (Latouch, you are boring us; you may go. I want Dr. X back.)
Conviction without courage is worse than useless. Ten years from now, this decade will be behind us. Bush will be gone, but there will still be Adorable Kittens. But will we have to courage to report their news stories? In twenty years, will we have stories of how we fretted away ten years instead of looking the NSA, Al-Qaeda, Haliburton, the Religious Right, et. al., straight in the eyes and said, "Bring it, Bitch -- I'm not scared of you. "
posted by VMM at 4:59 PM
3 Comments:
Stop reading news. Listen to some music. Have a nice talk with someone. Life proceeds.
I have heard from X, who apparently is alive. I will post more of him later. In regard to the Laird's post he says:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
i've often said that al gore would have won, and i mean completely not actually, if only he had adopted 'the apple way' and run on the simple slogan of 'skinny black chicks dancing'
- thanks for all your brilliant blogs. i've been looking all over for wild genius stuff like this!
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