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harness that energy
Thursday, November 1 2001
I had a moment all by myself this afternoon. It came as I walked down 7th Avenue in Park Slope Brooklyn, having spent the entire day drinking coffee and staring into my 19 inch ViewSonic Monitor. The sky had been mostly overcast, but suddenly the sun broke out and cast its ruddy autumnal rays past the clouds. The light passed through the warm humid air and played ever so gently upon the bustling people on the east sidewalk of the avenue. One could be excused for a moment for retaining the delusion that this world had been created by a benevolent God.
Back at the brownstone, all one had to do for a return ticket to reality was turn on the teevee. Now the loop that MSNBC was stuck in featured repetitive clips of a slow-motion pan down the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, showing in the distance the barren hills of Marin county. They looked like Afghanistan would look if it suddenly lost its status as a land-locked nation. Supposedly there's a credible threat of a terrorist attack against one of four California suspension bridges, but I think they're just trying to get our minds off the anthrax scare. I don't know about you, but I wash my hands every time I handle the mail; it's an easy enough thing to do and I'm sure we're not being told the extent of the postal system's contamination.
In other news, I sold all my stock today. I'm $169 ahead and ready for my next round of investments, which will begin the instant the next terrible thing happens, whatever that happens to be. One thing this current news environment can be counted upon to do is generate volatile markets. The Dow crashes in and out with a force greater than the tides. I'm here to harness that energy.
If you think this is cynical, how about the attitude of our current administration to the ongoing crisis? More discouraging than the existence of Osama bin Laden in the world is the extent to which the present administration has been using the war as cover for furthering their selfish, unpopular energy, economic, and police state policies. The press blathers on in monotonous loop about the anthrax threat, alternately splicing in propagandistically-worded "news" from Afghanistan, while failing to inform the public about the rollback of civil liberties and the increasing financial surrender to profitable corporations (even as they lay off their workforces). Has anyone proposed making these tax cuts and airline bailouts contingent on the affected corporations not laying off their workforces? Why is it that the press is suddenly accepting extremist supply-side economic theory without question? I have a feeling this recession isn't going to be one we can tax cut our way out of. What exactly does a rich guy do with money when you suddenly give him lots more? Somehow I doubt he does as my friend Josh Furr once did, blowing it on the toys he never had as a child.
Despite all the unity coming as rhetoric from the administration (and as flags flown from available surfaces by the American public), the powers that be have done little to conceal the differing value they attach to lives affected by terrorists. It's not just the heartbleeding they've done for corporations while essentially ignoring the plight of their workers. The Congress, people in the media, and others who might be expected to come to a trendy Washington cocktail party see their workplaces instantly shut down at the slightest trace of anthrax, but damn it to hell, those postal workers need to stop bitching and deliver the fucking mail!
Ah, the George W. Bush administration, a little bit of the reheated past from the back of the refrigerator. Better smell that before you pop it in the microwave! What little taste it once had has been replaced with a pervasive funk.
Tonight Edna brought in a dead sparrow, some native American species. It was cold, but its body was intact and limp enough to suggest it hadn't been dead very long. I have a feeling she's climbing trees in the backyard and stealing them from their roosts, wild animal (Terry Nutkins) stylee. If Edna was a opossum and those little birds were chickens and the backyard was my parents' farm, Edna would have some explaining to do. One night back in the 80s my mother ran out to address a commotion in the hen house and ended up pounding an opossum dead in the goat pasture with a large homemade mallet.
How about the latest advertisement from CapitalOne, the ad that features ghostly demons pouring out of an envelope as it is ripped open? I'm sure it was designed well before the anthrax scare, but I'm very surprised it's still being run. It would seem to be in poor taste, at least by the sensitive standards of the fickle, panicky American public.
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