The Place of Human Mess
The day has grown dark out here in this cushy suburb of Chicago where people are boring and live or die based on their annual investment returns. Life is dull. Indeed. Sometimes it feels as if there is no life at all, just a collection of vanity license plates and tanning salons. One must look far and wide to find the underlying demographic comprised of weirdos and scoundrels, people who know a thing or two about having Fun amid the din of lattes being slurped down greedily by girls who would be prostitutes if it weren't for their rich daddies. It's enough to drive a man insane. There are plenty of faces but very few people.
Let's not fall headlong into a depressive rant about the consequences of upper middle class life in the year 2007. We all know that such things will soon be relegated to the past and exist only as echoes of squandered prosperity. DuPage County might survive the coming fallout, but the rest of the country will become a vast ghetto where survival will depend on the amount of ammunition you can strap to your chest before leaving the house every morning. There is, even now, a small part of me that thinks a post-apocalypse might just be the ticket to garnering a little perspective with respect to our vain, failed species, but this creeping notion is buried in my depths, in that slimy corporeal dungeon where Truth can occasionally be found. The Place of Human Mess. An even bigger part of me knows, however, that the threat of mass extinction can only accomplish so much. We must take down the moneylenders first and then be left to wallow and curse in the wasteland. People are notoriously stubborn, but more than that, we are delusional with aspirations of meaning or worth. In the end, Mother Nature will have to do the job for us. By the time she finally smashes the message through our skulls, it will be too late.
Bust the Deal. Spin the Wheel. How did Mad Max ever become an evangelist?
So here we are. You and I. All of us. Slaving away at thankless jobs, and if not, sitting on millions of couches in millions of homes across the world waiting for some kind of sign, asking stupid questions like "Why?" The time has come to cope with our cosmic smallness once and for all. If we do not, we will continue proliferating silly notions of man's superiority over animals or the existence of Heaven/Hell. Hate crimes will skyrocket, and you had better not be anything but a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant...or else. University Republicans will eat you alive, and Hitler's birthday will become a worldwide holiday. The consequences of inaction are grave, and even if all my rambling and quasi-philosophical gibberish doesn't make one bit of sense (it doesn't), you should think about the ramifications of giving people the benefit of the doubt. On an individual basis, this might work, but en masse, we are a singular organism comprised of spite, arrogance, and discord. The next generation will see anarchy--not the good kind. Malice will be the rule, and some of your children will see what the world looks like from atop a war pike.
Shit. Have I gotten this frazzled about the head? Has the occipital lobe of my brain eaten itself away, or did some bastard parasite climb into me through my asshole? Something isn't working right in my innards. Communication breakdown. Running on defiance and sheer will. The system has been compromised, and I don't know how long it'll hold together.
Glowworms, Mr. Churchill? We are just worms, and thank heavens for that. It will make the end all the more painless.