Alright alright alright. My legions
Alright alright alright. My legions of readers, their brains bloated with the hunger-gas of idea-lack, have not been pestering me to fill this space. Having (somewhat) given up on commenting in the world situation (always hovering between Bad and Sure To Get Worse) and having written (probably) most of what I want to say about Ground Zero (seeing as how it's all cleaned up now and whatnot) I suppose some brief blurt of verbiage regarding the Neurosis In My Head is in order.
I have indeed sort of thrown in the towel as far as politics on Astonished Head goes. It's just too goddamn depressing, for one thing. 'Politics' these days seems to be an endless parade of sterling examples of the worst in human nature: greed, cowardice, incompetence, prevarication, and, above all, thick-wittedness. We live in a system that guarantees representation to the greedy, the cowardly, the incompetent, the dishonest and the thick-witted. A noble idea, but the system failed to compensate for the fact that, inevitably, the worst of us rise to the top. People forget that cream floats because it's nothing but fat, and if you live on fat alone your arteries will clog up and you'll die, strangled by your own indulgence.
I can't play the game that is punditry (not very well, at least). It's all well and good to adopt this or that position...there's more than enough information floating around out there these days to serve any argument you care to make. It's all about research: finding the facts that back up the bits to which you've elected to lend the name of Truth, and then artfully arranging them in a convincing manner. Arguments fly back and forth like bacon grease at Springfield Elementary's first dance. But nothing really gets done, no fundamental changes are really made, and the political game continues on heedless of who plays what position; indeed, the game continues in flagrant spite of those who play it, ensuring that no one of sound, immovable principle can achieve any measure of real power. Arguing about it becomes an exercise in self-indulgence and a neuronal pissing contest. After trying that out, I've decided that I don't have a taste for it.
For another thing (the first 'thing' was mentioned way back there, in Paragraph Two) there are many, many people out there who do have a taste for it, and instead of scrambling after them and pretending like I'm a Clever Fellow Who Likes Punditing I'd rather be the Clever Fellow that I actually am, who is occasionally right about things but has the disturbing ability to sound much more right about things than he actually is, which is a Tremendous Power that must be Used For Good, Not Evil.
'Good,' in this case, will probably consist of bits that are quite a bit lighter than the bits that currently reside here.
The lie will be given to this bit the next time I get ticked off about something, I'm sure. But for now I'm going to sit inside my hollow tree stump and think about what I can write about that actually entertains me.
