Where Basements Hide The Past,

 

'The front lawn pumpkin patch and Halloween decoration wars have begun in earnest they have' I can almost hear myself mutter this as I unselfconsciously try to regulate my speedwalking past an enormous inflatable baby yoda in front of a midcentury split level.

A faux churchyard cemetery that would have easily found a place in an Ed Wood film is a few doors down and it just goes on from there. Werewolves, monsters hanging from scaffolds, cauldrons and every manner of macabre set decoration one finds somewhat out-of-place in this self-professed religiously conservative community,   Even my father mentioned it yesterday as we conducted our Saturday morning drive around town to the garage sales and junk picking ho-downs in which we truly thrive. I found a stunning set of vintage Royal Doulton china from which I still reel, but that's not for here.

The Halloween decoration yard wars sets people up for the spectacle that is about to be a glittering Holiday Wonderland where skyrocketing energy prices is something for which Europeans and lesser states concern themselves.  Baby Yoda can easily segue from one holiday theme into the other and for many aesthetically challenged, baby Yoda has become something of a yearlong fixture next to their junk-picked wagon wheel.

The batshit Packers fan who built the unsightly fence I am sure I mentioned is trying to compensate with a festival of pumpkins on his porch, but the lack of any cheering mums suggests he may have spent his yearly outdoor budget on the hideous property dividing eyesore or he could be, as the Packers flag suggests, merely and far more likely, a simple asshole. 

The freaks with the giant spiders and spiderwebs constructed in their yard should promptly find a therapist with enough time, alcohol a bewildering willingness to listen to them blather on about their damaged childhood.

For my daily saunters around the childhood neighborhood these decorations and the not-so kind-spirited competition they expose serve as the crescendo of a summer of nosey, gossipy busy-bodiness which must sadly be placed on its shelf until the warming Spring sun makes the pathways of judgment, comment and shared opinion passable once more.  For every season.

  

A Tedious Subject For Tedious People.

I can not longer watch the news because there is nothing newsworthy happening.  I am sure it is happening somewhere but it is quite beyond my knowing.  I can remember when I could turn on the news and hear news: investigative journalism covering this corruption, or that corporate malfeasance, or that petty local drama, but now it seems to be just politics.

I am not sure what control group told the news moguls of the world that the American people care about the blow-by-blow documentation of the doings of Washington palm-greasers.  I mean I have a degree in political science and I never used to watch the news to learn about what was happening in Washington simply because it was never there.  

Politics used to be fairly dry, largely inaccessibly and unfailingly uncool and it was on CSPAN and in the Congressional Quarterly, which I would read like a normal ass policy wonk being paid to do so and only because I was being paid to do so.  Now politics is everywhere all the time unless you are watching the weather channel or some cooking network. I mean ffs the shrill ladies of the view seem to be incapable about babbling about any other topic.

And I can understand why it would happen.  It is propaganda in its purest form.  By detailing the inner minutia of politics it creates this false veneer of oversight and complexity that would preclude anything underhanded from actually happening.  Which is hilarious because the old adage about sausage making and politics came about neither because they were making sausages nor doing anything polite society should concern themselves.

But now the news media (don't call it mainstream media because that makes you sound like a crank.  it made Chomsky sound like an intellectual in the 90's, but now it is crank-words) seems to have decided that sausage making is all the American people ever really wanted to see.  Curious?  No, not even remotely.

Whereas critiquing politicians, their policies and the underhanded means in which they achieved them used to be the sole responsibly of a political journalist.  Holding politicians to account was once 80% of their job description.  Now merely suggesting a whisper of criticism is immediately dismissed as conspiracy theory, far left or far right it doesn't matter which depending on who wants to distract whom from what. Meet The Press, Face The Nation, etc these have devolved into little more than highly sought-after media-placements where politicians can sell their agenda, which are traded like some weird inexplicable currency.

 The tedious machinations of The State and the corrupt sycophants that busy themselves with its maintenance, its wars, its hegemony its finances seem to be the only thing that is of interest to the American viewer because that is the only thing the American viewer is given.  I suspect it in not unlike the state media they are subjected to in places like North Korea, but oh look, in America we have a spiky haired punchy dyke selling us propaganda for the State so that is democracy folks. Go out and check one of two largely indistinguishable boxes every two years, collect your sticker, don't forget to wear it and clap.

For Purposes Of Imitation Only.

I do not know what we did without the internet.  Everything happens so fast these days and the internet is a valuable tool for people navigating these rapidly shifting and often turbulent waters.  Following the 2016 election of Donald Trump it seems as though everyone with a keyboard and Twitter became quite instantly experts in Political Science, the Constitution, immigration law you name any abstruse aspect of public policy and John Bull or John QC was an expert and more importantly they were going to tell you all about it.

2020 seemed to come like a flash and all those unemployed experts in political theory quite miraculously transformed, like Wonder Woman looking for jazzy belts at Target, into immunologists, medical doctors and public safety experts and by this time the pattern and tools had already been established, they were going to tell you all fucking about it.

Now I know 2023 came in hot and we were already deep into two fake proxy wars and one quite real proxy war when shit started popping off in the Middle East quite a bit more than usual, China started making more than merely furtive glances in the direction of Taiwan, and North Korea is still fucking there and World War III may be well underway they don't actually call it that until afterwards. 

Well I have been off of the socials for a while, but when I got back on it seems like a bunch of people dug up their old limited edition DVD of Band of Brothers and are now mother-fucking, dyed-in-the-wool, I-couldn't-make-this-up, actual real life Historians.

This all has to be viewed in a frenetic background where children, yes very bright, educated and privileged but children nonetheless, are not only actual climatologists, but seem to embody the scholarship and erudition of a wide albeit opaque spectrum of academics from around the world on a topic where the actual academic and field work stretches back decades.  

It is stunning if one pauses and just tries to take it in.  So much is possible and not just in memes, but in the real life apparently.  It does a lot to bolster one's spirits actually, it encourages one to follow one's dreams, and my dreams are quite modest.  I just want to live in Rickmansworth and become an obscure yet critically respected artist.  The stars are there for others, let them reach.