Or… My Yearly Screech Against So-Called “Civilization”.
This time of year gets me to banging my head on my desk a little more than usual. Maybe it’s the lack of sunshine, the shorter days, the eternal struggle between “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” or maybe just general winter ennui, but for the last few years, as soon as the calendar flips its pages to December, all I want to do is crawl into my own sock drawer until the year ends. It’s not that I don’t love the Christmas Season and all its consumer-driven madness mixed with family stress, even though, like all people and especially sitcom characters, I feel over-saturated with Holiday Cheer sometime around Labor Day. Unlike the Grinch, it’s not the noise, noise, noise I object to, but the rest of mankind. That’s nothing new, of course, but the wretched, the awful and the miserable seem to come into sharper focus around December. And when I look back for happier times behind me over the course of the year, I realize how ungodly long that year has been. And the sock drawer starts to look that much more enticing.
I have yet to reach my December breaking point, but it’s coming. I thought it had arrived last week, when I was gripped with such lethal apathy that I literally could not get out of bed for the bulk of the day, but that turned out to be the simple return of my manic depression. I thought it felt too familiar to be the breakdown, which apparates a little differently every year.
What’s going to finally tip me over the edge, either before Christmas or immediately after, is, as usual and as stated, my ol’ bugaboo “racism”—namely my hatred for the human race. Maybe I pay too much attention to the news. Given that my morning commute invariably ends with my shrieking shutupshutupshutup! at the radio, that’s a definite probability. I also read a lot of news online and in the office men’s room, so I’m constantly surrounded by the pettiness of the other humans in charge. I don’t give myself an opportunity to escape it. Not that I could if I wanted to, living as we all do broken down on the information superhighway. There are “newsy” items in every sidebar on every webpage, selling us all products, events and ideologies. We’ve taken the “personal advertising” idea from Minority Report and brought it to life via our own insatiable nature, Victor Frankenstein yearning to play god. It’s getting so you can’t even log onto a nice, quiet porn site without being screeched at to watch Sarah Palin kill a moose from her car or how Barak Obama is a Socialist for Big Business.
Given their “mandate” from the 20% of the people who bothered to vote in the midterm election, the GOP mounted the stairs of the Capitol and declared that they wouldn’t rest until the tax breaks were extended to the rich… and, okay, the rest of you rabble can have them too. Anything else brought before them would be ignored, tabled, filibustered and pissed on until they achieved their goal of lower deficit by higher spending.
And on the Democrat side, with spines made of Slinkies, declared that the teacher had forgotten to assign homework for the weekend. Having failed to get anything done while they were a majority, upon seeing the wall erected by the GOP attempted to run straight through it with all the legislation they could. Even though there had to be a door there somewhere, they continued to smash their poor widdle selves into the barricade and oh how the Republicans laughed!
We don’t have leaders in the government any longer. I’m not quite sure when we did last; certainly not in the recent past. What we have now is a rich white-guy touring company of Revenge of the Nerds, with the GOP standing in for Stan Gable and the Alpha Betas and the Democrats as the Tri-Lams. Minus, of course, the good looks and sexual prowess of the former and the genius intelligence and third-act display of courage of the latter. Both sides are simply stuck in an immature impasse, both frats engaged in an endless and counter-productive panty raid and lemme tell ya, here in America
And stuck in the middle, the rest of us. Those either too stupid with rage to think beyond name-calling or those so tired and beaten that we merely throw up our hands and flip to Two and a Half Men, now on 24 hours per day for your viewing abuse. You want to see frustrated impotence? Ignore the first five seconds of your average Viagra commercial and click over to Yahoo News. Pick any story—anything—a “story” about new American Airlines fares to Rangoon
“Look, I came here for an argument.”
“Oh, sorry. That’s next door. This is Duel to the Death.”
No one is merely “wrong” any more. Everyone is fucking wrong and fucking stupid and an asshole and and and gay too! If arm-waving, chest-beating and spleen-venting were made an Olympic event tomorrow … guaranteed there’d be fighting about it.
“Happy Holidays!”
“It’s Merry Christmas, you lousy Communist! Go back to Maryland
“Can’t we all just get along?”
“No! And fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck your hamster and fuck your favorite color and fuck your deepest wishes, hopes and desires! Jerk!”
Christ, we can’t even agree what to fight about. The GM bailout turns into a debate of the virtues and/or evils of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Debates about DADT morph into cage matches between Mitch McConnell and Michael Moore. There’s a sound-bite about Ted Turner, instantly he’s decried for marrying Hanoi Jane and then divorcing her for reasons other than being Hanoi Jane, and who the hell is Hanoi Jane, anyway?
Glee = pedophilia and so does DADT. And the GM stimulus bill!
Obama’s a Muslim socialist who’s gonna take all the money away from everyone and just give it to the guys on Wall Street.
Sarah Palin is a smokin’ hot moron with smokin’ hot dorky glasses who doesn’t know the difference between North and South Korea
God hates (insert hated thing here) and so should you! Because that’s what a loving God wants!
Abortions for all!
Booo!
Abortions for none!
Boooo!
But think of the little unborn babies! If we kill them before they’re born, we won’t get the chance to kill them later with war, capital punishment, lead-painted toys or carcinogenic food additives! You MONSTER!
You can’t redefine marriage just to suit the gays. Marriage is and has always been between one man and the dowry-holding family of whats-her-name. The chick. Your beloved. Shut up and say “I do!” Next thing you know, you’ll want to use the word “ignorant” when you want to say “rude”.
“We have an agenda to ensure that Barak Obama is a one-term president. So I hereby declare D.C. closed until further notice.”
“It’s imperative that we pass this bill for health care for 9/11 first-responders. Quick, let’s hide it under this pile of legislature for ‘Illegals for Islam’—it’ll be sure to pass then!”
“Oh, and speaking of Islam, did you know 119% of all Muslims are out of their minds batshit insane and want only to fly buildings into planes because they hate our freedom and our taste in footwear? And if they do, they get 72 Virgin Tom Collinses in Heaven. It’s true. ‘Cause they can’t drink here. Allah said they can’t hold their alcohol—it’s true!”
“It’s Sallah, you racist douschebag! Where do you think Indy’s sidekick got his name?”
“Dude, I hated Crystal Skull. George Lucas should have his spine pulled out of his ass for what he did to me.”
“The Wikileaks guy should be put to death for telling us what we don’t want to hear!”
“Rush Limbaugh wants us to kill all Liberals!”
“You Liberal hater—don’t you understand satire?”
“But… but he said ‘Go kill all Liberals!’”
“Just like a Liberal to have no sense of humor! Typical lib hater spewing your typical lib hate. Hater!”
“Conservatives are going to turn the poor into Soylent Green to feed to Israelis in order to perpetuate the war in Afganistan, using money made from blood diamonds and angel’s tears!”
“Who told you that?”
“theskyisfalling@ohmyfuckinggodwe’redoomed.net”
“Oh, well then it must be true.”
We don’t need a Rally to Restore Sanity, we need some sort of DNA-scrambling logic pulse to put us right with the world again. Or maybe Snake Plisskin had the right idea with that electromagnetic doohickey at the end of Escape from L.A.* Maybe we could all do without a little technology. If only for a little while. Because the World Wide Web made the World a lot less Wide somehow and, frankly, I’m feeling a little crowded. I’m heading for the sock drawer now. Wake me in 2011.
(*Dude, I fuckin’ hated Escape from L.A.
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