Chile Con Mierda

 A taco, a taco, my kingdom for a taco...

(...and it's not even Tuesday).

#Hungry

Divine Chaos

 After nearly two years of the pandemic, we're now clearly going through an epidemic of trauma and rage.

American society is fraying at the seams.

An undiscussed impact of life amid COVID is that everyone is getting a bit more deranged and we're confronting a broad rise in aggressive and antisocial behavior.

We see it in the documented surge of reckless drunk driving, attacks on healthcare workers and schoolboard officials, students lashing out at teachers, and in people getting into fights.

Workers who face the public say Americans are devolving into children. They scream at servers, throw tantrums over sold-out items, and knock out the teeth of flight attendants.

People are so wound up with worry and anxiety that the smallest thing sends them into a tailspin of hysteria.

Let's face it - we're suffering from collective trauma. With Omicron feeling like the recurrence of a nightmare, many people are near the breaking point. Buckling under the stress of a long-lasting public emergency with no clear end point - not to mention supply chain shortages, extreme-weather disasters, and bitter political and social divisions - Americans are bringing their internal struggles to bear on interactions with strangers.

The problem is likely to get worse rather than better. Frustration-aggression theory tells us that when people are chronically frustrated and then experience stressors, aggression will follow.

Frustration intensified when we thought the pandemic was ending last spring, only to be hit with two successive new variants. People are asking, "Will this ever end?"

Even before the pandemic, the nation was seeing soaring rates of depression, suicide, and overdoses.

Social media and all the shit Donald Trump unleashed on the national ID: He gave his followers permission to openly hate people, and his opponents to hate them back.

But there must also be some spiritual or moral problem at the core of this. Americans are becoming more narcissistic, more aggressively tribal, more antisocial.

Something darker and deeper is afflicting our society.

And we better wake up soon before it all crumbles apart.

An Eater at Large

On the one hand, going eight months past your inspection due date saves you a lot of money in the long term.  On the other hand, if you get caught by the po-po, they will give you a pretty sizable ticket.  I managed to get away with the former this time around, but did experience the latter a few years back.

Last Monday, I spoke with a Pep Boy on the phone to make an appointment.  When he told me they don't do appointments on the weekend, I imagined myself getting up at 7AM and wheeling it in, bright and early.  However, while in bed this morning, I thought of a question: Is it true that only nut bags are morning people?  Three hours later, I was up, and counting my money, because my debit card was now defunct, thanks to Mary Jo.  I'm pretty sure she tossed out its replacement into the recycling pile, never to be seen again.

Next stop:  the bank.  I had to deposit three checks, and take out the usual amount of cash that would bring me down to $1,000.  If you're not in the mood for any student loan scumbags freezing your account, then it's best to keep making withdrawals to limit the damage.    It's move that's worth a certain amount of inconvenience.

The Pep Boy that arranged to service my car was incredibly nice.  I wasn't awake, and paused a few times so that my words would come out straight.  "Here's proof of car insurance... I'll imagine you'll be needing this."  I had my paperwork in a neat little stack.  He took what he needed and off he went, reminding me that they could go all the way to 8 o'clock, depending how busy they were.  A good general rule here is that the more time you spend at Wendy's or Wal-Mart or Taco Bell, the more wasted the day.

I didn't feel like sitting around staring at my cell phone the whole time.

I felt like going home and staring at my laptop instead.

Walking home as fast as I could turned out to be one of the best decisions I'd made all day.  The trek was almost like a mini-trip to the gym, and I relished the mellow simplicity of it all - hoofing it until I felt a little spike of adrenaline.

But first!  My efforts to move further and further away from beef had come to a head.  The next thing I knew, I was in the local Burger King at eleven in the morning ordering up one of their new Impossible Whopper meals.  The young girl working behind the register asked if I wanted it to come in a small, medium or large.  I picked medium, because I didn't feel like having to choke down a shit-ton of fries or a trough of their artificial soda.  I get the sense that soda is becoming even more processed, now that they're moving away from fountains and instead using those push-button kiosks.  Some Coca Cola executive who uses terms like "flavor profile" and "thirst demongraphics" has convinced the company that it all tastes the same, but it doesn't. 

Anyway, Burger King got a new business partner last spring.  You see all the pollution and health problems and animal cruelty that exists when millions of people eat meat and one understands at once that something needs to be done.  Told casually by blue collar workers in commercials that they can't tell the difference, you still, warily, need to ask yourself, "Well, what kind of laboratory hocus-pocus is this?" 

Just what I expected... you slather on enough mayonnaise, cheese, lettuce, ketchup, tomatoes and onions and anything will taste like a Whopper.

Definitely a far cry from their earlier efforts in the 90s, where the burger patty was just mashed up veggies.  It was like eating a hockey puck made out of potpourri.

Diary of a Pinball Wizard

The Who were, arguably, the greatest rock band of all-time, because they embodied and epitomized everything that made rock music compelling. Rock is supposed to be loud, energetic and aggressive, and the Who were the prime musical exemplars of these qualities. They just might be the only band in the world to take rock music as far as it could go.

I continue my streak of evading all adult responsibility by settling in and watching 1979's The Kids Are Alright for the first time in its entirety.  I recall listening to Tommy in sixth grade and found it to be the ideal escape, with each song guiding me through the strata of everything that was possible with a concept album. 

What on earth was this band about? They always talked openly about how they couldn't stand each other, four distinct and very different personalities.  

Humanoids From the Deep

 Eight seems to be about the age when many of us saw it. I was at my cousin's birthday party full of cake and ice cream and soda, and this was on in the background while we were running around, high on sugar. At one point - the final scene - a woman is giving birth. A giant geyser of blood erupts from her navel as she's screaming, and then one of the humanoids comes popping out. It upset my stomach so bad that I had to go into the next room to settle down. My uncle Bob saw how green I was and asked if I was alright.

I don't think I had the words...

I Burned This For You

 After watching PEN15 for the second time through, I've realized that my teenaged years were the only time I ever really felt alive, and I don't even remember them all that well.

Prize Your Individuality Above All Else

The best parts of a person are those that distinguish him or her from everyone else—and, more importantly, that no one has the right to determine how another person lives.