Different Animals, Same shit

That was when you realized that 

the future will be safe in his hands

She's always right, just ask her. 

Fired, bItches!

Network 2016

The following is based upon the dialog from the movie Network released in 1976. In honor of this  prophetic satire, I have attempted to update Howard Beale's rant for the contemporary audience.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression; your depression. Everybody's underemployed and scared of losing one or both of their part-time jobs. The dollar buys a nickel's worth of product you will have to replace ten times in your lifetime, banks are thriving while you're going bust. They charge you to deposit your check, charge you when you use your own money, and charge you when you transfer funds. Let's face it folks, these banks got us coming and going. 

Mom and Pop shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter because punks are running the streets and the only “reasonable” and “sensible” answer we hear is stricter gun laws. Who are they kidding? The punks don't care about private property, civil society, and they care least of all for the law! That's what makes them punks. Why?, you ask, I'll tell you why. As above so below...Those sworn to uphold the Constitution, the highest law in the land, act with utter contempt for the principles that document claims we believe. Everybody everywhere says they know how to fix it, but they all disagree, and no matter what we do, it just gets worse. 

There's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit for cattle, the water is liquid poison. We know that somewhere inside of us there is a single patient cell mutated by one of these contaminants just biding it's time, waiting to metastasize and end it all, and we sit watching our TV's, and clutching our digital devices which convey the horrors taking place just outside our castle gate. 

Today, we had fifteen unsuspecting people who naively wandered too close to another human being and were murdered by the “suicide” bomb he carried, and shows depicting the intricacies of homicides committed by family or friends remind us "trust no one", and sixty-three other garden variety violent crimes around our neighborhood reinforce nationwide paranoia, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. 

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're completely fucking psychotic! It's like everything everywhere everyone is in a crazy drag race to see who can out crazy each other. So, we don't go out anymore. We sit in our outrageously overpriced condominiums gobbling antidepressants and mood stabilizers advertised in commercials depicting an idyllic world, but when you go to your primary care physician to get this panacea he's no longer in your network and it's going to cost you a fortune to navigate through a gauntlet of tertiary care deniers only to be prescribed the last bottle before the recall. 

You never get to see the idyllic world instead you watch in terror as they announce the class action lawsuit pertaining to the very drug you were prescribed which has now become the catalyst to set that one dormant mutated cell on an unremitting rampage through your body. The end is near and it's yours as you come crashing down to a flat line ending. Inside, your body is becoming smaller while the abomination within you grows. Outside the world you're living in and your place in it is getting smaller, too. Our friends grow more distant and when you venture out to test the waters of their friendship with your toe, they creep significantly closer to your gold. 

So, all we can do is hide in our imaginary safe place, our redoubt of delusional defense and whimper, "Please, just leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my microwave, my TV, and my digital device, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. What did Occupy yield any of us? A chance to practice sleeping in the streets. I don't want you to riot. You would only be slaughtered. I don't want you to write to your congressman because they don't care about you. I don't know what to do about your depression, the stagnation, the terrorists, and the brazen crimes which go unnoticed and unpunished in the hallowed halls of our capitol. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' 

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your ergonomically designed chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to your architectural window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' 

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your exorbitantly priced, triple-pane, argon-filled windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' 

Things have got to change. Really change. Not the kind of change where the only difference is the occupants of the White House. Real change and for the better. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then, we'll figure out what to do about your depression and the stagnation and the terrorists. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" 

Keep yelling until half a dozen men in riot gear come and repeatedly tase you into submission or shoot you dead for acting erratically in a world where only the medicated are calm, only the insane are content, and only the deeply disturbed are able to make sense of it all. The only thing that may bring you peace will come a few seconds after you hear the words, “Tase his ass, again!”

...or you could always pray for a meteor.

If the Poets Ran the World

If the poets ran the world...
The sky would bear and bleed a million more colors
With the exception of the depressed who wouldn't bother
Every newborn would be held and loved by all mothers
Except for teenage boys rhyming to get at their daughters
War would be a word without need or definition
But the contrarians who would equate it with the human condition
The sun would shine and moon rise on intuition
But the Psalmist would take offense at messing with God's Creation
Love and fun would be our world currency so everyone would be wealthy
Save those goth kids who would exchange suicide notes as  currency
If the poets ran the world.

The Best of Multiculturalism

Something for US

Something for THEM

Hey, we got diversity going on!