There's going to be a lot of pixels spilled today on the life and death of Robin Williams, and there should be.
An extraordinarily talented man passed yesterday, a man who possessed a unique genius for stemming vast tides of pain and hurt and anger with a sublime rapier wit.
I have no wish to conjecture on whys and hows of the matter, although a small sad voice at the back of my mind just said, "Ah, yes." when I heard of it. And it may well have been an acknowledgement that what does one do when there is no room for shared humor in this life, anymore, and your one fantastic job is to pull people together for a bright moment for a good, communal laugh at ourselves? It is a stifling, boiling world we live in, with no respite in sight.
If God were a parent... Okay, if God exists, and were a man, and believes in the "Heavenly Father" Hallmark stuff enough to at least act like a concerned step-father "watching over us," how should he feel whilst watching over us? Like a Mom who knows she's going to spend hours cleaning the kitchen, but it's important for us to try to make our first batch of cookies ourselves, so Thank God there are no carpets? Or maybe like a mute paraplegic Dad watching the toddlers find his loaded guns in the bedstand? The 70's were more Mom in the kitchen, which is funny stuff. But today...
...Nothing is funny. There is no air for laughter.
The world is melting. The answer is, burn more oil and coal. More Heat.
Fracking poisons the very wellspring of our lives. So: ban any information about it.
Christian kids are being beheaded by religious extremists in the Middle East, because we invaded and deposed the secular leader of Iraq. The answer: Invade Iraq.
Christian children risk everything to come to "America" because other little kids are being hacked to pieces and dumped in public as a warning not to stand against the drug trade in Central America... (for export to noses in the United States for "recreational use.") No kidding here: the answer is to send the kids back to face their fate.
...The "Information Age" is consuming us.
Banks and Wall Street own all the cards, they make a percentage profit for private use only on almost every transaction that happens in the United States today, but taxation for the public welfare is ungodly and evil.
We are all out there in incredibly de-humanizing ways that define our limitations severely...
You are your credit score.
There is now tracking software that is more aware of who you are than you probably are. It's watching you right now, don't bother taping over your laptop's camera...
Everyone on Facebook smiles more than you do.
"Nothing ever really goes away on the internet." ...and we don't "catch up" with each other anymore. Now it's "Hey, I saw your vacay photos on line, looks like you had fun!"
We used to be the one place on Earth you could head West, change your name, and re-define yourself for a fresh start. Now Big Business can "re-structure" and shed its financial woes like a teenager skinnydipping, (What pension obligations?) But there is no recourse under the law for the bankrupt individual with credit card or student loan debt burdens.
None of the Big Brother stuff helps us.
Comcast wants our free speech. To sell a redacted version back to us.
Nestle wants our water. To sell a very expensive version back to us.
The NRA wants to create a visceral existential imperative out of our 2nd Amendment by selling us enough weaponry that we all need to arm ourselves against each other.
Every new shooting tragedy gets us deeper in guns. And death, lots of dead and wounded people.
And talking about it in a sane and caring way, even if you were shot, and survived, or lost a child, brings you real threats of death by shooting as a consequence.
Not funny.
What is left for a truly brilliant funny man to tell us?