ALLERGIES, BLACK COFFEE, AND GRIDLOCK

Modern society seems to me a celebration of all the things that lead away from the truth, make truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists. And to think that all this springs from a civilization that claims to adore life, but actually starves it of any real meaning; that endlessly speaks of making people “happy,” but in fact blocks their way to the source of real joy.

-- Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying


Sounds reasonable enough to me, given how heavily pickled and warped my cognitive abilities are these days. So -- modern consumerist culture is a shabby, bald-faced lie? We live in the middle of a cockeyed circus, a gonad-rumpling farce, a spleen-rupturing fraud, an infuriating travesty of a society flying off its rails and heading straight down the karmic shitter? What a jaw-dropper.

Please excuse me, my friends. It’s back to expending what little life-force is left, for the ultimate (and largely chimerical) benefit of my evil scum corporate employer. I always seem to sink to new existential lows after again wasting gobs of precious time in commuter traffic, just so’s I can toil away for subhuman tyrants and sycophants who despise me. What a puke-fest.

As a matter of fact, caught within the malignant buzz produced by the unhealthy commingling of black coffee, 12-hour allergy pills, and endless miles of automobiles filled with the stupidest people on the face of the earth, I’ve actually lost track of what I was going to groan about this time around. A common problem, that, especially when you stop to consider -- in general terms -- the overflowing sump of diversion, depravity, and despair that provides so much raw material for one’s ire, complaints, and cantankerous prescriptions. There’s simply too damn much to focus on, too many rat-like scandals and assorted verminous outrages scuttling about in the foreground of things, far too much monkey-motion and empty gestures and contrived posturing and gadget-driven lunacy that doesn’t mean anything ... Which is all by design, I suppose.

***

The distinctly human principle of schadenfreude pretty much requires one to feel a sense of gleeful anticipation at the apparently imminent demise of Torquemada Gonzales, and it would be pleasing to imagine that this business of politicized terminations of US Attorneys is, perhaps, the long-awaited catalyst that finally launches the ponderous but desperately overdue removal of the Bush Crime Family. The extremist unraveling of the Republican apparatus -- sunk to its earlobes in the corrosive, corrupting goo of fanatical religiosity, unfettered and unapologetic corporatism, and the ambitious fantasy of global empire -- conclusively demonstrates its inherent, and highly dangerous, unsuitability in any sort of “leadership” role ... but the evil imp who dwells somewhere near the base of my skull says, So what? Is cashiering Gonzales really so important, when there are equally-qualified thugs clamoring to take his place? Seeing that treacherous asshole thrown off the public payroll would be all fine and dandy, and if he can be used as some sort of leverage against the regime as a whole, that’s even better; but with so many Vichy Democrats expelling so much hot air, tacitly committed to enabling the Neo-Con program, do you seriously believe they’ll actually toss Bush and his lickspittle administration out of office?

Again, apologies all around. This is what I get when the Alavert combines with the caffeine, which usually occurs when the gridlock is at its worst, thereby setting the stage for a uselessly miserable day. Perhaps another quote from a real writer is in order:


And always, if he had a little money, a man could get drunk. The hard edges gone, and the warmth. Then there was no loneliness, for a man could people his brain with friends, and he could find his enemies and destroy them. Sitting in a ditch, the earth grew soft under him. Failures dulled and the future was no threat. And hunger did not skulk about, but the world was soft and easy, and a man could reach the place he started for. The stars came down wonderfully close and the sky was soft. Death was a friend, and sleep was death’s brother. And the stars down so close, and sadness and pleasure so close together, really the same thing. Like to stay drunk all the time. Who says it’s bad? Who dares to say it’s bad? Preachers -- but they got their own kinda drunkenness. Thin, barren women, but they’re too miserable to know. No -- the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything’s holy -- everything, even me.

-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath