I became Old Man Shouts At Cloud at a too early age.
In my very early 20s. When I was first assaulted by the word “facilitate.”
To this day, I do not know what that word actually “means.”
And that is the problem. For the word doesn’t “mean” anything. It is a no-word. A word invoked solely to cover Crime.
From its first appearance in my life, to its last, it has functioned but as a signal that I am about being Robbed.
Of money, or, most often, of the space to create.
Through a series of no coincidences, that it would be too much of a tangent to here relate, I had, very early on, read my Orwell—the Real stuff, the essays—and so was attuned, long before “facilitate” was thrust in my face, to the mustering of words to conceal, like squid-ink, Assaults.
“Facilitate” just means that somebody—I suspect a sort of machine, having taken human form—is about stealing from me.
Next, not too many years later, came “mic.”
This, a product of knuckledragging. De-evolved ’80s drooler musicians who, perceiving the English-stamped imprint above one of the holes in their amps—”mic”—believed that to be the proper abbreviation for “microphone.”
No. There had emerged, decades before, a perfectly serviceable, and apt, abbreviation for microphone—”mike.”
I know that this—the fuggin amps—is where the pre-monolith “mic” came from. Because I had played off the same sort of goddam amps for years.
But this was the era of “punk.” When it was actually a Crime to, say, be able to play your instrument.
Once, I recall, when reviewing a punk band, I made the mistake of observing that a woman had mastered the guitar.
When my piece appeared, she was summarily heaved out of the band. Run out of town like a three-legged dog. While letters flowed into the paper suggesting that I be lynched in the County Square.
Similarly, familiarity with the English language was considered so “uncool” that anybody who even spoke of such a thing needed to, at the very least, be dropped down a well.
Thus, “mic,” drooling, knuckles dragging, displaces “mike.” So that, today, imbecility and illiteracy has so overrun the land, that, now, these days, “mic” is considered the appropriate abbreviation for “microphone.” While “mike” makes the majorly portion of English-speaking humans just scratch their heads.
“What dat mean?”
And I—I, am a man without a language.
For, to this day, whenever I encounter “mic,” in any piece of writing, I immediately turn the page: that piece is dead to me.
There are many more such examples. But I will not bore you with them here. For no one likes to listen to an old man, shout at clouds.
However, in an attempt to try to coerce you past the squiggle, I will say that, therein, lies fevered jeremiads against two word-formations that have metastasized across the nation, since the re-election of the black man: “pivot,” and “fiscal cliff.”
“Pivot” is, to me, a word that does not refer to human beings.
Fewer words are so cold and contrived and awkward and mechanical.
A robot may pivot. But not a flesh-and-blood human being.
I loathed the word when it was invoked, Lakers-era, to reference a move in basketball. A move that rendered humans mechanical.
“Pivot” is a machine place. A place less than human.
Today we hear, in the second term of the black man, that the United States has decided to “pivot” towards Asia.
What this means is that Al Qaeda and various other associated Crazed Brown People have become, both to the American people, and to the Masters Of War, boring.
And so there must be a new Menace. And, lo, China, already identified, more than a decade ago, pre Atta-into-the-towers, as the Next Menace—China shall serve quite well.
And so all the creaky robots, they shall pivot—ships steaming, planes flying, spies snooping—towards frowning darkly, upon the yellow man. As well as the brown man.
From the nation presided over by the black man.
Wonder why his hair got gray so fast? Wonder those poisoned-blood bags under his eyes? Wonder the wrinkles? The parchment skin?
Wonder not.
Kabuki. Not his. But he is, fingered, as Director.
Jackie Robinson died, for Americans’ old and in the way sins. So will this man.
And so, we arrive at “fiscal cliff.”
Absolutely totally important complete bullshit.
My colleague—so sorry, but she’s a genius—observed that, in that brief post-coital period, following the vote-returns November 6, already The People, right and left, were ginning up, fight-or-flight, to get Extremely Concerned, about This, That, and The Other.
They could not live, these people—right or left—unless their hair was actually, continuously, on fire.
A student of brain science, my colleague, she perceived that, especially there on the intertubes, but also on radio and TV and in the treesheets, there was happening an addiction thing, an atavistic fight-or-flight deal, where people developed a serious jones—where there must, always, blooming from out of them, come some sort of Outrage, over which they could in turn express their Outrage.
And so, though one might reasonably expect that, after the election returns November 6 at last arrived, there might be at least a bit of a respite: no. Instead, the lizard-brain fight-or-flight had, by the very next day, or at least the day after, moved into Warp 10 ululation about: (1) the pee-pee of David Petraeus; (2) the nimrodness of Israel; and (3), the Doomsville of the “fiscal cliff.”
And so, while prior to the re-election of the black man, there was little discussion of any “fiscal cliff,” upon his re-ascension, “fiscal cliff” became all there is.
New heroin. Into the veins. All we hear about. Avid. Always. To feed the jones.
As see, here, this chart, tracking the these-days mention of this “fiscal cliff” heroin, as compared to the 2010-2011 “debt ceiling” heroin. No comparison. The jones. Heavier. Moving. More extreme. All there is.
Excuse me. Needful here, to shoot up.
The “fiscal cliff” thing is about money. Which means I can’t take it all that seriously.
Money is new: invented only in 7000 BCE.
And now, today, almost over.
More than five times as much money as exists in the world, is currently owed in debt.
That is not sustainable.
Eventually the humans will see this.
Once the humans ate LSD, and looked at their hand, and saw right through it. So too will they look at their hand, with money in it, and see right through it.
Money is over; money is done.
The final manifestation, before we swirl up and out, will be the money, with my lover’s face upon it.
I don’t care if that makes sense to you.
For money makes no sense. And I make more sense than money.
In this being—these beings, alpha and omega, terrestrial and extraterrestrial—there is no pivot. There is, instead, only love.
That there is this nonsense now, about taxes and Medicare and Social Security and debt limits and reserve currencies, as the American Century sinks, as is its rightful fate, beneath the waves—in the histories, when they come to be written, all of these will be minor matters. As compared to how many humans became to walk upright. In love.
(see, with, like, cool illustrations and stuff, red)