Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The New Barbarians

How does the classic Christmas carol go, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” Not for me. Not when the TV and the radio are jammed wall-to-wall with commercials hyping Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and all the news anchors talk about is the great deals down at Best Buy. Not when it’s all Christmas all the time before the Thanksgiving turkey is even cold. The season has been elongated and stretched, expanded and super-sized by retailers in search of customers. Before the last scream of Halloween fades, up go the Christmas decorations, and the faux cheer spreads like a river of sewage across the land.

Never mind that the unemployment rate is high and holding steady or that banks continue to foreclose on delinquent mortgages or that every day more Americans slide below the poverty line; everybody is a potential consumer and if they have a pulse, however faint, and can walk, however unsteadily, then by all that is holy about American-style capitalism, they must have the latest LED flat screen TV, a new toaster, an iPad or a Kindle Fire.

It doesn’t make a whit of difference that many of the people lined up twelve hours before the stores open should be buying food for their children, not the latest electronic gadget.

Did you see the video footage of the human herds stampeding in search of Black Friday bargains? Did it make you want to hang your head out the window and puke? Fighting over an iPod dock? Slugging it out over a pair of boots? Putting other customers out of commission with pepper spray? What kind of nuthouse has America become? The mindless hoards are goaded and prodded and prepped and primed all week long, tantalized with promises of deep discounts on today’s must have products, mesmerized by visions of gain, and by Black Friday people have lost all contact with reason or common sense and descend on the local mall like the barbarians of old.

If Macy’s or Target advertised a one-pound block of cow dung at a 35% discount, some fool would stand in line for an hour to buy it. Yes, I know, people have free will and critical thinking capacity, and shouldn’t be manipulated so easily, but isn’t that what happens every November? Why else is Old Navy in downtown Santa Barbara open for business on Thanksgiving Day?

Bah humbug. Bah fucking humbug. The reason for the season is buried beneath a pile of gaudy sweaters from H&M, crotch-less panties from Victoria’s Secret, and Black & Decker power tools from Home Depot. Baby Jesus rides the escalator up and down all day long, unrecognized, ignored, pushed this way and that by caffeine and Red Bull addled shoppers. “Outta’ my way you little fucker.” Recognizing a lost cause when they see one, Mary, Joseph, the three wise men, the camel and the donkey have already fled for their lives.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Black Friday and Other Tales

New York City cops in full riot gear drive peaceful protesters from Zuccotti Park. Much the same thing happens in Portland, Oregon and on the campus at UC Berkeley. The powers that be in other places follow suit, citing concerns for safety and sanitation. Motionless, peaceful students at UC Davis are doused with pepper spray. Many protesters are arrested. Real democracy is messy and at times uncontrollable. The Occupy movement vows to continue.

Herman Cain, former pizza magnate, can’t keep his mitts off women. Sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger all over again, and we know what happened to Arnold. Herman’s candidacy was doomed to begin with, so it will be no surprise when he drops out of the race for the GOP nomination. Cain’s name recognition is higher than it was when he began his quixotic quest for the White House, and this will help him sell books and keynote speeches on the rubber chicken circuit in the near future.

Have you noticed that the media never mentions Cain’s race or demands that he answer questions about race? None of the “Is he too black?” or “Is he black enough?” questions about Herman. In the corporate media, race disappears as an issue once a man passes the conservative litmus test.

In the meantime, that bloated toad Newt Gingrich is rising in some polls, though nobody understands why. Gingrich was a blowhard when he was Speaker of the House and has done nothing in the intervening years except suck up to corporate donors. As a self-styled “historian,” Gingrich should know that a blind, three-legged dog has a better chance of being elected president than he does. The American electorate can be dumb, but not that dumb.

All Mitt Romney has to do to secure the GOP nomination is avoid a total mental breakdown, like what happened to Rick Perry recently – or be sideswiped by some long forgotten scandal. Everybody has a skeleton or two in the closet. Hard to say what that might be in Mitt’s case, but candidates who piously preach family values and the sanctity of marriage (only between a man and a woman of course), are generally tripped up by a skeleton of the sexual variety. Who knows, maybe Mitt had a homosexual dalliance as a curious undergraduate or dabbled in cross-dressing.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama wanders around the White House late at night wondering what became of the magic. Liberals can’t stand him. Environmentalists want his balls on a platter. Labor leaders feel betrayed by him. Young people who worked their butts off to get out the vote for Obama in 2008 now fully understand how it feels when a politician fools them into thinking he is something that he is not. Those voters are likely to stay home in droves come 2012, a possibility that contributes to Obama’s late night strolls through a silent White House. Every now and then Obama is convinced that he hears the ghost of Richard Nixon whispering in the corridors. Though for different reasons, Nixon often felt hated and trapped.

But to hell with all that political garbage. What really matters in America at this moment – beside the fact that legendary football coach Joe Paterno has been dislodged from his pedestal and Demi and Ashton are calling it quits -- is that Black Friday is drawing nigh. All over the land shop-a-holics are polishing their credit cards and planning for that magic moment when the glass doors finally swing open at Wal-Mart or Target or Best Buy, and they surge forward with the rest of the herd, trampling security guards, unattended small children, elderly ladies, and sales clerks. There will be casualties on Black Friday, brawling in the aisles, fistfights in the parking lot, and many hospital emergency rooms will be forced to turn patients away. Serious Black Friday shoppers accept the risks of bodily injury in the same way a mountain climber on Everest does.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Benign Neglect

I have neglected the Balcony of late. Life interferes with my scribbling. Excuses? Well, there is the job, kids, homework, dishes, bills, laundry, Halloween, errands, grocery shopping, stuff that needs to get done or else the wheels fall off. Try letting your toenails grow for a few weeks and you’ll see what I mean.

The days here grow shorter. In the evening fog rolls in off the ocean, dense in some areas, wispy in others, and in the night we hear the warning beacon sound in the harbor. A waning crescent moon rises above the pines on Anapamu Street. The County Bowl concert season is over, closed out by Deadmau5. It’s been a while since we’ve heard coyotes howl from the canyon that runs west of the Bowl.

Bob Dylan sang that people don’t come and go as much as they float, and sometimes people float to places and positions they don’t belong. Sometimes circumstances and dumb luck conspire to produce an outcome that leaves you shaking your head. Trying to understand is fruitless; it’s like trying to penetrate the meaning of a Zen koan. Whatever and whoever, it just is, and the decision you must make is to fight it or go with it. Life or death it’s not. Worse comes to worse you say, “I’m done” and hit the road. Some windmills are not worth tilting at; they will keep turning no matter what.

The illusion of control, of making sense, of logic and pattern, of rationality, of cause and effect, of being the master of one’s own fate, of being the guiding hand on the cosmic tiller. It makes no sense and perfect sense at the same time. It’s cream in your coffee and sugar in your tea; it’s a trout on the end of your line and a clear mountain stream at the end of the trail. It’s a homeless woman giving birth in a cemetery under a full moon. It’s the smartest man in the room doing the dumbest thing imaginable. It’s a beloved preacher fornicating behind the church with an underage whore.

My son is watching a rerun of Gray’s Anatomy. The show has an MD for everyone: African-American and Asian, lesbian and straight, dashing and dorky. The voice over by the actress who plays Meredith offers canned wisdom: “No matter what’s going on, a surgeon must have a steady hand.” OK, no argument with this obvious observation. My son tells me that I’ve reached an age where I cannot suspend my disbelief, and for this reason I’m incapable of enjoying the TV dramas he finds so intoxicating. Gray’s Anatomy is apparently the best show ever…my loss for not watching it.

In the world but not of the world, wandering with the people who float, beyond the point where sense is made, past the place where we cease to be what we think we are.