If a person rolls his car and winds up lying on a remote
highway with a bunch of broken bones there are two ways to react. One can either say: "Oh dear, this means a long stay in the
hospital" or he can exuberantly exclaim: "I'm still alive!" We think that T-shirts that say "I survived
the Mayan Apocalypse!" might sell well.
With or without an augmentation to the bank account, this columnist
thinks that all the members of the Mayan
Apocalypse Survivors Association should make a concerted effort to make 2013 an
enjoyable experience.
Yes, we realize that the suspension of unemployment checks is a serious economic situation, but if people who encounter that problem overcome the challenge just think of how baffled and aggravated the rich people, who expected to see soap opera existential crises every night on the evening news, will be. It will be just like in the movie serials. When 2012 ended it looked like "curtains" for sure, but when 2013 begins the financial cliff (except on Fox) will be No Big Thing (NBT).
If, somehow, the unemployed workers, manage to adopt a Zen
existence that isn't dependent on a weekly paycheck, just think how incensed
that will make the capitalists who are counting on seeing the victims of their
strategy suffer extensively. It would
almost be as if the victims refused to suffer just out of spite.
Back in the Eighties there was a spate of self help books that advised people to cut back on their standard of living and retire at a young age. Perhaps some of the people getting their last unemployment check next week, should buy some used copies of those books this week?
After a few moments of contemplating what would make a good
topic for a more feature oriented column, we realized that it might require a
great deal of fact finding to produce a good trend-spotting column. On the other hand, the obvious absurdities in
politics are so readily available and the mainstream media makes no effort to
point them out and so such columns full of "these columns practically write
themselves" material need very little effort to produce, so maybe we will just
slowly transition into some of the alternative topics.
Do the places that sell marijuana for medicinal purposes make extra profits by selling such periphery items as lava lamps? Are T-shirts featuring a famous rolling paper logo still being sold? Do the pot clubs sell those rolling papers? Do rock concerts still include light shows? When is the Jefferson Airplane going to release a new album?
Was it George Carlin who first said: "If you can remember the Sixties; you weren't
really there."? Shouldn't the closing
quote for this column be something more intellectual such as Nietsche's
quote: " . . . when you look into an
abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
(We preferred to use the Wile C. Coyote howl of despair, but, alas, it
was not to be.)
Now the disk jockey will play "Rescue me," "Cry me a river," and "Sea of heartbreak." We have to go find a good VHS tape to play on New Year's Eve. Have a " . . . but what if an armed guard had been there" type week.
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