the Minutes 81611

We are living in Paradise.
I was down in La Grange on Saturday, population 4641.  If you’re ever in Texas be sure to decamp in Houston or Austin.  If you venture out beyond the city limits of either of these two metropoli, you might end up in, well, Texas.  “Texas is the reason” this country rolled back to a debt-ridden, war-mongering Republic.  It was nothing new but W’s conniving mule smile didn’t even try to hide:  him and Cheney and them (including a wussy Dem Congress) Cashed Out Everything except Social Security (although they tried to do that too).  They lied.  They fucked us from the front and they wiped off their pricks with the Fourth Amendment.  It’s your fault.  You and the press never touched the Bush War and Doctrine.  The American people may as well have been looking at those 8 years through an empty toilet paper roll compared to the microscope the objective American press scrutinizes Obama’s term with now.
He inherited it all.  We did too.  We’re left holding that empty toilet paper roll and the shit just keeps coming.

I was drinking Margarita’s in Sealand on Business 77 when a small, ugly and indifferent, Asian-American woman approached me.
“Is everything all right?”
Her hatred was a class act.  She wasn’t simmering but certainly somewhere within her, there in the fascia of her muscles, was a hatred for anything more than 100 miles outside Houston, and certainly me, the Yankee from Austin with his laptop and haterblockers.
“Yes, yes.  I was wondering what the passkey for the internet is.”
“I don’t know,” she intoned, “well my husband does the internet and I don’t know anything about the internet or computers really.”
If you believe this Asian-American woman knows nothing about computers or the internet than perhaps the other realities of La Grange, Texas would be more than copasetic with you.  With its charming 18^th Century store hours and cemeteries on either side of 159 as you enter town-why, you’d be happy as a clam beneath the dumb hot sun and looking forward to the next Bike Rally or Rodeo.

“Well then.  Can I have some more mayonnaise?” I asked.
The people of La Grange aren’t to blame.  Neither the red states nor the blue ones.  That town’s just another sleeping city on the plains.  Maybe they have jobs, maybe they have trucks, maybe they don’t have anything better to do than stare at a Yankee and hope the angry Mexicans at the bar will kick my ass.  Being to all the lower 48 has made me into some kind of reptile.  I’ve seen allot.  Small townery doesn’t faze me and after Indianapolis and Cleveland you’d be hard to kill, too.
History’s a queer thing.  It’s all so clear in hindsight and it’s more remarkable that the U.S. reacted to past horrors at all let alone acted constructively or did something befitting of the Land of the Free.
The unemployment rate in Greece is up 40% from last year and Ireland is following suit.  Hungry people cause World Wars.  It gets worse.  There’s an enemy out there and the only way for him to get to Heaven quick is to die trying to kill you.
There’s a mother travelling across the horn of Africa for 20 days with her children searching for food.  She must leave those children who die on the journey behind, buried in the sands of the desert.  When she gets to camp she won’t be able to immunize her children to the diseases running rampant at camp.  The religious militants there reject and want no part of Western medicine or intervention.
There’s a jackass up there on the podium pandering to the New Dumb.  There are people in sleeping towns in this country who won’t think anything of slipping into some ready-made demographic/voting bloc as long as their hatred has a target and as long as that target is YOU.
Then there’s you and me, Jack.  We’ve let our apathy get the best of us.  It seemed to work in the past.  The world slid further, darkly down, and we didn’t care.

I have 6 more installments of the Minutes until the end of the Terrible Summer.  By the fall I’ll be able to write 800 words in 8 hours and collect my $50 and be on my way.  While working on this column my outrage has become a curious thing.  Neitchze was right.  I took a look into the abyss and it took a look into me.  The apathy is cracking.  It’s giving way to an Outrage that’s addictive and enlightening.  I’ll be rebuilding the temple and I’ll be keeping and eye on you, brother.

if you call me brother now forgive me if I inquire
just according to whose plan?
when it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must
I will help you if I can.
when it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must
I will kill you if I can.-L.Cohen

We are living in Paradise.  We all have to die.  Welcome to the New Century.