On Firing Squads

Some of you Twitter users might have participated in Susan Orlean's #booksthatchangedmyworld discussion.

One of the many books I mentioned in my personal list was The Plague by Albert Camus. It didn't sit well with me after the initial reading but slowly grew on me over time as I turned the events over and over in mind.

The following passage is one that I think about a lot:

"Have you ever seen a man shot by a firing-squad? No, of course not; the spectators are hand-picked and it's like a private party, you need an invitation. The result is that you've gleaned your ideas about it from books and pictures. A post, a blindfolded man, some soldiers in the offing. But the real thing isn't a bit like that. Do you know that the firing-squad stands only a yard and a half from the condemned man? Do you know that if the victim took two steps forward his chest would touch the rifles? Do you know that, at this short range, the soldiers concentrate their fire on the region of the heart and their bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist? No, you didn't know all that; those are things that are never spoken of. For the plague-stricken their peace of mind is more important than a human life. Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o' nights, mustn't they? Really it would be in shockingly bad taste to linger on such details, that's common knowledge. But personally I've never been able to sleep well since then. The bad taste remained in my mouth and I've kept lingering on the details, brooding over them...."

If My Arms Were Big Enough...

I'd put all of you in a simultaneous headlock and give each and every one of y'all your own specially dedicated noogie because you deserve it.

xoxo, bitches.

We Are All Doomed, Seriously

I've been thinking of getting knuckle tats. My right hand would read: PUSH. My left: OVER. The idea being to give a good laugh to all those involved in the next scrape that I find myself in. The reveal would be right before the fisticuffs, you know, the moment of levity that takes place during the stare down. (That's how it happens, right?)

And maybe, just maybe O. Henry sits up in his grave a little bit and strokes what's left of his decrepit chin in appreciation.

Or not, because it's already been done by someone else a million years ago when people were still fish.

Luckily we're not fish anymore or a species that inhabits the Gulf of Mexico... but I'm not even hung up on that nightmare. We were going to kill the planet somehow it was just a matter of when. Now with the knowing, it's liberating to finally see the horizon of Our Impending Doom.

For me this means saying no to very few opportunities. That person asking to by you a drink might be buying you the last beverage you may ever have in your life so don't pass it up, even if you are driving. You may be leaving your house to purchase groceries, never to return to a house or CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT. Cats are Tweeting!

It is time to party like world is going to end. Soon.

Spoken like a truly crazy person? Perhaps, but consider this my fellow human: The state of the Gulf of Mexico prior to the incident was not good as in like not even close to good. There's already a dead zone about the size of New Jersey. That's bad. I don't imagine dumping a couple million-billion drops of oil into it will make it better.

Now, if the Powers That Be can go into a well a mile under the sea completely unprepared with any kind of workable contingency plans for when everything goes wrong, what is to stop them from committing the same kind of atrocity on land? Who's to say it isn't happening right now and we just don't know about it? Judging by the Government's lack of involvement and just even SIMPLE understanding of the risks associated with deep water drilling it's safe to say that no one is watching the back of the American people, or the front.

But it ain't even about that, because I'm talking about the people of the world (Sorry America even though we destroy it the best) and what WE are doing to it every single day. It is completely unsustainable. The methods of continuing our energy hungry way of life get dangerous and more destructive as the resources become harder and harder to reach. People have shown time and again that we will destroy anything in our path to get what we want. Sorry, Other Species.

[This is the part in the story when I get up from the comfy chair at my computer desk and make a hot cup of tea using the instant hot on my espresso machine... ]

Something y'all need to understand here is that I'm only pointing this out because it weighs on me heavily, I mean calm down people, I'm not suggesting we fore sake our instant hots and cede our comfy chairs to the apes. That's lunacy.

No one tries to force a carnivore not to eat meat, right? I'm just saying we need to be a little more conscientious about our destroying so we can milk our run a little longer. I suspect there's little we can do about our chosen path and when the aliens come from afar to pillage our worn out rock (which will be inhabited and controlled by eleventh generation sentient robots loosely based on a Steve Jobs' patent.) they will study our destructive method of existence and classify them as Human Nature.

So enjoy it while you can. I am going to party until my body won't cooperate or the lights go out. Whichever comes first.