Lately, I've been feeling like (and I'm somewhat serious here) I need to build some kind of impenetrable, survivalist-type bunker, in which Little Shiz and I can hide out when the shit goes down and gets ugly. Because, at this point, it's not even a matter of if anymore, but simply a question of when.
Welcome to Sanctimonious Sundays! This is a new diary series that will be published by members of the groups The Amateur Left, Team DFH, and the Frustrati, as a collaboration of sorts. Feel free to get your sanctimonious on, baby! It's welcome here. It's always welcome here.
Does anyone else feel like this world, and the personal choices contained therein, is getting smaller, somewhat choking, yet definitely cloying? It's as if everything, on a purely physical plane, has come to a head and I am (almost literally, but not quite) waiting for the Universe's head to explode at any moment. Ticking time bomb, people!
There is so much bad news today all day, everyday, ya know? Just so much bullshit! everywhere, coming from every orifice and every crevice imaginable. It's like Mother Earth has resigned herself to humans' capacity for complete and utter neglect and general evil, and basically threw up her arms in disgust and surrender, and was just like, "Alright, fine, but make this shit quick."
At this point, at least for me, this is not a matter of fear. I have feared things before (who hasn't?), and fear itself doesn't feel like this. This cloying of dread, this increasing and nagging impression that politics of all levels are just dog-and-pony shows, that the system is rigged, that the cynical now reign supreme in my mind's eye ... Well. Let's just say that this view of the world is relatively new to me.
I am an idealist for certain, but a romantic primarily. I "aww!" when I see pictures of babies and puppies and kitties, I cry at sad movies, I'll move my vehicle if you ask me to, and I genuinely want to know how your day went. Sincerely, I do! I engage. I care about people and, most likely, I care about you. I am a sucker with a big heart, and I have been told this numerous times. My heart and my head have frequent battles regarding this and, unsurprisingly, my heart wins nearly 99% of the time.
In short, I am a fucking softie. Always have been, probably always will be.
But now, I dunno. I believe that humanity is circling the cosmic drain, and I didn't come by this impression through anything that could possibly construed as a "wanted" narrative. When I told people two years ago that I thought Barack Obama was the last great hope for the United States of America, I wasn't kidding or being facetious. I really wasn't.
I meant it.
And now that I have formed an opinion of President Obama dissimilar to the one I truly wished for, from 2004-2008, something within me has changed, died. I haven't necessarily become cold, but I have become instead ... I dunno, hard? Thick-skinned? I am, of course, simply attempting to bypass the hurt and pain I experience. Most times, I choose to do this with humor. Sometimes, I lose my shit. Often times, I either disengage completely or distract myself with a bright, shiny object. (Hey, look! House has a new episode on tomorrow night!)
But, mostly, I just long for how I want things to be. I live inside my head. I contemplate crap that I couldn't even begin to dissect or sort out even two years ago. Like, OK, what happens when the animal species that humans know and love suddenly become extinct, in spades? Because that is coming. What happens when simple folks rise up against there governments? Because that's already here. What happens when I can no longer afford to buy food? Because that's for certain.
It's depressing, all of this crap. Depressing in a very poignant "Well, fuck, it did SO not have to be like this!" kind of way. It bums me out to where I can't always get out of bed in the morning.
So, essentially, I believe that we will all be eaten by grues in the coming months/years. And grues are, as you know, scary, scary little beasts!
A grue (Gruesomicius ravenousi) is a box-shaped gap-toothed mammal known for eating humans, though more recently they have been known to kill certain lone wolves, construction workers, a gerbil or two, speranah, the occasional monkey, people who send annoying chain e-mails, your pets, and...well, Grues like eating a lot of things. Grues are not often seen roaming the wilderness in herds, whistling old-time Irish pub songs, working on crossword puzzles, and calculating the amount of back taxes owed by car salesmen. The reason Grues are not often seen doing anything is because grues live in total darkness, so the whole "seeing" thing would be kind of hard to do. The likelihood of being eaten by a grue is probably non-zero.
MC Frontalot is, clearly, very experienced in such areas:
Lyrics, "It is Pitch Dark"
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
consider whose fault it could be:
not a torch or a match in your inventory.
It got narrated at you in the second person.
Every time you booted up, it seemed you got another version
of your life told to you by a status line blinking,
the impossible people you could be without thinking
yourself insane of personality problems,
with a mop on a drop ship or trying to stab a goblin.
That don’t play in public life. You get arrested,
psychoactive medication daily in your big intestine
and attesting that the voices in your head
said the dwarf shot first, embedded arrow then you bled.
But doctors with needles posit repeatedly
that you knocked down that midget in the park unneededly.
This has seeded the idea that you should
never venture from the house, never get misunderstood
by the non-player characters inhabiting Earth,
none of whom are too concerned about Nord & Bert,
not one of whom ever aimed a fish around the room,
trying to get it in the ear canal because doom
beset the last planet they were on, or near
the verge of a set of poetics they wouldn’t hear.
Never peered at the clues with invisible ink.
No SM goddesses ever gave them pause to think.
Never piloted six robots, each distinct.
Don’t matter how many 2-liters they drink,
they’re not gonna follow what you’re saying at all.
They impugn and appall in the scope of their gall,
as you hide in your room in disgust with the lights turned out.
Turn ‘em on in a turn. Leave ‘em off for now.
You read a pamphlet from a mailbox that urges low cunning,
offers cursor and prompt: type >run and you’re running,
and parses what you tell it, pronouns intact,
abbreviations if you need ‘em (better keep it gramat.).
Better punctuate your sentences and never redact
the name of anything ambiguous. You’re about to get asked,
do you mean the red one, the round one, the crooked, or the blue?
Better keep that in your pocket, don’t know yet what it could do.
Could be the spray for the grue; you’re gonna need it if it is —
a situation that reloads, restarts, or quits.
Wonder how many points out of how many points
you’ve got to get before you’re done. Endeavor then to rejoice,
when you wish more ardently, identities shed,
for continuance, the rhyme forever voyaging. Fled
from all lights and colors, from all smells and sound:
just the lyric on the monochrome display and you’re proud
to make another verse appear by solving riddles.
If you didn’t have to sleep, you know you’d never seek acquittal.
You’d be ever in the middle and the midst of quest.
If it weren’t for >don the gown. you’d never get dressed.
In your underwear typing, just like Front,
keyboard attached up to my fingers — wrists bear the brunt —
as I seek to do stunts simply through their descriptions.
I think I went once to some sands that were Egyptian.
And I retain plane tickets, snapshots, receipts,
yet I stand unconvinced that this has happened to me.
I wouldn’t want to misremember or get confused.
Recall of crawling towards a pyramid appearing over dunes.
Recall of entering the thing and descending stairs.
Does it descend from there, adventure to nightmare?
Did I battle a snake? Was the treasure intact?
Or did the TRS-80 in my brain get hacked?
Thanks, Grampa, for buying it. Now my life’s ruined.
Twenty-two years later, head’s infested: got the grue in.
PLUGHing, XYZZYfying, trying to escape,
but I can’t ‘cause I’m up and around and awake.
Yeah. So please consider that my problems with President Obama reside a little more deeply than a few of you can (or do) understand. I'm not a teabagger. I'm just an average American who wants her life, and the life of her family, to improve.
Period.