[ week 39 | 51 ]
Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.
Wednesday, 20.11
Look. I’m a crank. First to admit it, last to deny it. I grump. I yell at newspaper boxes when the headlines are especially idiotic. I can’t watch the mid-40s on our cable TV feed because that’s where the “news” channels hang out, smacking their lips and offering quickies in the alley for five dollar five dollar. Commercials crawl under my skin and fester. The Spouse says I should worry about my blood pressure. (She should talk. But that’s another story.)
Nonetheless: as a rule, I eschew the sort of Seventh-Seal Fourth-Horseman Jesus-fuck-the-sky’s-falling-all-over-our-egg-filled-handbasket kind of posts. (You know what I mean.) Not because I’m not tempted, no. (I am. Oh, Lord, I am.) But because it’s such an overdone pose; such an easy way to get off your yayas; it’s so—lazy, really. And redundant, these days, since we seem to be locked into a nightmare war for no good reason at all that will destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands if not in the end millions and unleash the slavering dogs that only ten years ago we’d thought we’d put up for a good long time and there’s nothing I can do to stop it; redundant, and more than a little tasteless, then, to sniff through the detritus of popular culture and hold up some choice bit as the shattering trumpet blast, the onrushing chorus dressed in white, now howling, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? How long?
Nonetheless. And taking all that into due consideration.
We are, the lot of us Yanks, all going straight to hell.
