Welcome to the New Year. Of the rest of your life.
You know that time only moves forward, right? Like, forever? Until your dead? I see people talking about making every day count, calling out others who waste their time, doing one thing every day that scares them. All the while trying to un-memento that mori.
You can’t make every day count. You’ll waste your time more than anyone else ever will, when it’s all said and done. And doing something every day that scares you is a marketing ploy that will literally shorten your lifespan, either through the stress you’ll continually endure, or from actual death because that thing that scared you was accidentally falling into a pit of hungry crocodiles, or playing a game of wetsuit, 400-fathom chicken with a gulper eel.
(Which is one of my biggest fears, by the way.)
These are anonymous people on the internet who say these things, mind you, so there’s that. But there is some truth to the conviction.
I’m convinced, however, that the faceless internet masses don’t mean or even believe anything they direct at other anonymous personage on the internet. So, there’s that, too. Primarily, it’s just people being faceless impurities in a faceless blob in some hashtag somewhere in the world. Occasionally expelling gas or something.
I once had a conversation with a twenty-two-year-old friend of mine. I was thirty-four at the time. And in that conversation, he slurred and slandered me by calling me old. Which was and always will be amusing, to any once-thirty-four-year-old now in his forties. But I was sure to memento-slap him back, telling him: “You’ll be thirty-four one day, too. Or you’ll die first.”
And he said, “Yeah, but it’ll take me a loooong time to get there.”
No it won’t. Trust me. That conversation happened a dozen years ago. So, basically, it happened yesterday. Think about it, anonymous and faceless impurity on the internet.
With that out of way, onto news.
Which, when I open my metaphorical newspaper (i.e. click a weblink these days), I find is mostly political discussion (and dysfunction) about what should, might, or is probably going to happen in America: the future presidency, legislation on border blockading, aid to Ukraine, stopgap measures to keep the g–damn government running, etc.
And War in Gaza, which has been slowly spilling out into neighboring territories.
And NFL playoff news. And what to watch on Netflix. Which: Kiss my ass, NFL playoff news and what-to-watch-on-Netflix.
And, of course, that jackass of an orangutan of a human being, Donald Trump and his perpetual, contemporary-cum-retroactive follies.
Much to my chagrin, inability to predict the future and having too much faith in Americans to do the right thing when no one’s watching them, Trump is not only still being discussed as a politician, but he’s still the g—damn leading Republican frontrunner for president, and now has just won the Iowa caucus. Whatever that is. But, if you’ll remember, Ted Cruz beat Trump in 2016 at the same event. And look who won the primary. Anyone who’s not Trump in the Republican party who wants to run for president, I’m looking in your direction.
Which is tough. Because you’re all basically invisible.
Most Americans, in the end, don’t care about the national, political circuitry and geartrains that govern their lives and the lives of their fellow citizens. All they care about is getting someone to represent them in Washington (read: disappear into the otherwise-forbidden halls of the Capitol, maybe re-surfacing from their state mansion here or there to have a town hall meeting when election season starts up again), who, by now, they should know enough about to not vote for, but are going to anyway because, again, most Americans really don’t care about politics. Because their news sources don’t tell them enough of the truth. Or paints their favorite candidate as a victim. And only highlight his accomplishments, back when he used to be president. And not his repeated f—ups. (Jackass of an orangutan of a human being, I’m looking in your direction.) And because the news inflates and conflates domestic and world events into things that need fearing in this world, and their candidate is the only one who can protect them.
In the end, we’re all really expected to be an anonymous and faceless (and fearful) impurity in the blob. And to vote. And buy goods or services via an exchange of direct or credited currency.
And then to go into debt. And shut up our mouths and faces about it.
And to keep voting.
And then to repeat the whole process, over and over and over again. Until we’ve mori’d.
