I COULD USE A DRINK RIGHT ABOUT NOW

The past several days and weeks prove rather conclusively the fundamental worthlessness of comprehensive sobriety, particularly as it relates to tapdancing along the ragged fringes of the great Californian exurban toilet bowl, as it were. Getting, and remaining, at least half-way blottoed is the only solution to this madness, apparently.

“Solution” -- yeah, right. That’s a good one.

When I spare half a thought about quaint notions like Congress “challenging” the Chimp on the almost non-issue of “supplemental war spending” (or whatever the fuck it’s officially called), or mild mysteries such as Torquemada Gonzales still having a job, or, now, newspaper headlines that read “HORROR, OUTRAGE AT CAMPUS KILLINGS” (The Sacramento Bee, 17 April 2007), I unconsciously find myself reaching for the nearest bottle -- of beer, wine, power steering fluid, anything. While not technically on the wagon, minor alterations to the daily drudge of living have created a situation that’s virtually indistinguishable, which, generally speaking, is probably a good thing. However, for all the alleged benefits of alcohol avoidance, it’s left me psychologically unprepared for the continuous, utterly relentless onslaught of corruption and violent dissolution that so epitomizes this ridiculous epoch.

Well, naturlich, a more or less permanent state of drunkenness is no solution to anything. But there’s something to be said for maintaining the illusion of a numb, boozy cheesecloth of indifference -- the better to strain out as much of the neo-con terror rampage as possible.

Seriously, though. I’m so burned out, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to care about anymore. College students in a state with some of the most lax gun laws in the nation, who had the supreme karmic misfortune to be on the receiving end of some psychotic nutjob with a cracked brain pan? Hundreds of thousands of dead people in the boiling charnel house otherwise known as Iraq? $3 gasoline? Republicans who obscenely decry gun violence while starting illegal wars of aggression, who then allow laws prohibiting automatic weapons to lapse? Global environmental degradation and the coming uninhabitability of the earth? Corporate media whores who gladly facilitate neo-con bullshit? “American Idol”? The fascist thug-freaks who overthrew the United States government in 2000? Migraine headaches? Impeachment? What? For fuck’s sake.

***

Tom Waits wrote and recorded a song a few years ago called “Get Behind the Mule,” and while it may not provide a definitive answer to the insane hallucination in which we seem to be pointlessly spinning these days, minds far more enlightened than mine might construe it as a starting point of sorts. My favorite bit:

Pin your ear to the wisdom post
Pin your eye to the line
Never let the weeds get higher than the garden
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Always keep a diamond in your mind

You got to get behind the mule
In the morning and plow


I need a beer.