Where's My Glasses
Television alone is reason enough to lose hope. Three years ago I climbed to the roof and knocked the satellite to the ground. But "news" comes through the rabbit ears. Banality, brutality, tripe, anger, with big doses of fashion models who walk the walk of broken hips that healed crooked, or celebrity gossip and tits-a-lation, it's all there. Suicide and homicide bombers. Burning buses. Tyra's boobs are real and Demi got married somewhere between the smiling war mom gently carried from her protest under arrest. Play that bias again, and again, news that fit to please one muther then the other. Big ratings for the pundit darlings speaking from their assholes because their mouths know better and nothing is heard but the din.
Every winter children die in tenement fires and old folks are found frozen to their kitchen chair. It's called unfortunate. Imagine the coming winter with the cost of energy. Moms drown their children and we say they're depressed. Mass murder in school by children and we say the kiddie perps were victims; bullied. Pedophiles destroying lives and we install a turnstile system for them. But it's 3 strikes and life for selling crack in the ghetto instead of cocaine on Carolwood Drive.
After a century of research and billions of dollars we still cut, burn, or poison to treat most cancer but can cure a limp pecker. We have millions without healthcare but anyone can get Xanax or Oxycodone. You might die in the ER waiting for $100,000 surgery for that silent aneurysm giving you a headache, but you probably could scrape up $2000 or so for breast implants.
Bullwhips up the arse or feces smeared on canvas is art but photos of naked bodies in a pyramid is torture. Depends on the arse, the artist, and the patrons. Millions will rush to watch beheadings online but recoil at our own troops handiwork traded for porn. We censor politics that make us look like dirty players but can't censor anything someone might use to get their rocks off. Freedom you know. We 'Raq and Roll. Give the people a golden shower and tell them its raining sunshine. We're a nation stretched out on the couch with a remote in one hand and our crotch in the other, wanting more. Debase us, kill us, prove guvmint loves us.
America shakes a finger at Chavez as we watch our own drown in poverty shitsoup, and demonize them for not having spoons. We snipe at China for censorship while our own press, poofed-up or flat-ironed hair-heads, read news the government hands them. Military dictator we screech at Castro, while asking for a greater military role for homeland storms or "catastrophic" events. Put troops and mercs in the street to kill thieves so my SUV and plasma screen is safe under 20 feet of water and I be free.
Corrupted courts, cops, and lawyers and folks say it's always been this way. Corrupted elections, billions stolen from the treasury. Neighbors gouge neighbors for an extra dime. Just business as usual, or at least for the last 35 years. Greed is good if you don't get caught. Give me an S&L loan or a reconstruction contract please.
Americans cry for "under God" to be included in the pledge and condemn other nations for inserting god in their politics. US religious leaders issue fatwahs and we shrug while moving tax dollars to a faith-based system. Lord can I get a million dollar grant to teach these 12 disadvantaged po' folks that marriage is good and give them a voucher for some groceries? Let's put Jim and Tammy Faye Holyroller in charge.
Politics and politicians so staged and scripted it's as boring and predicable as a Stephen King novel. I can't recall the last genuine political moment caught on tape. Regardless which side of the aisle is in power the opposition has it's script ready to keep cable news occupied with no change in the landscape. Blowjobs and shirt buttons. Nanner-nannergates that ebb and flow never going anywhere important enough to make a difference, sailing in the Sea of Stupid on a boat named Fool's Reality.
As friends continue to urge me to leave this sinking ship I keep thinking maybe things can change ... it wasn't always this way, or this bad … maybe there's hope yet, and maybe ... maybe it's not really as bad as it looks … if I can just find that pair of rose-colored glasses.
8 comments:
...and to where would you go when leaving the sinking ship, Kate?
Is there a safe harbor anywhere on the planet?
There are a few safe spots, more pleasant, and demanding fewer cordobas or colones to feed the beast of government.
Heard on Wisconsin Public Radio:
Joy Cardin's guest, after six, explains why he plans to move away from the U.S. in order to protest the Iraq War.
Guest: Jay Robinson, Director, Poynette Public Library. Pastor, farmer, citizen activist. Former Green Party Candidate for Iowa Governor.
PROGRAM NOTES FOR WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2005
http://www.wpr.org/ideas/programnotes.cfm
Thanks for the link. That was a good interview.
I know you don't want mere fanmail nor brief thoughtless replies, but let me say a couple of things. "Where's My Glasses" is rough, ugly, poetic, beautiful, and moving. If you do move to anywhere, please keep posting. A unique voice is a valuable thing.
~dus7
-dus7
Your kind of reply is always appreciated. Thanks, and if I ever go anywhere I'll still be posting.
if I ever get out of duct, and I thought today was going to be the day but it isn't, you can come with me to Phuket.
good to know, oddly enough, that there are others out there who see current life darkly. when it's propped up as so squeaky clean and new shiny cars roaming the earth at will running us all over, spewing noxious fumes.
I have been lately out on the new york city streets and looking at the people who inhabit this place, and I find them sellouts mainly, with little compunction. Working hard making many dollars like goodly puritans. out of the daylight, in their dark places of business, soft and listless puffy creatures.
the native american who became diaspora of this place in the spirit world must be feeling that justice has in part been served, or have no soul left to them, and then there is nothing, so then nothing matters.
New shoes, new clothes, the city dwellers look wealthy. I make the assumption that the majority of the people who live in this country have done likewise.
some guy on his way to the 18th floor said he was more non conformist than the rest. If so, I asked, why was he going to the 18th floor - and not out on the street or down on the ground. what was that outfit he was wearing, who came up with that absurd costume?
the powers that be have learned, or so they think, how to pen us all up and keep us from making a stir that matters, until there comes the unexpected.
I wish I could go, but I can't for lack of funds. I guess I will have to wait for the rising waters or the billowing cloud of heat.
sad to wake up in an era and discover that like all the other eras it is it's own form of hardships and blues and meanspiritedness. families and friends hopelessly divided against each other. and to have thought that we had become better than that, and to learn that we were naive.
That self-discovery is hard to take.
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