L Dopa fix me
Alright.
               --Big Black, "L Dopa."

And:
Been home for a while, now.  The promised grasshoppers are everywhere.  The heat has been brutal, activated the eggs, or something.  It's a veritable plague.  Very biblical, only, because grasshoppers are much smaller and more inoffensive than locusts, in a weird way, cuter somehow.

And:
West Nile Virus is spreading.  Every day on the news someone else seems to be contracting it.  Only, of course, this isn't the case.  Only a few people have actually come down with the virus.  It's just that the airtime they spend on it makes it seems like the world is doomed, that this thing is sweeping the country, that we're looking at something out of the pages of The Stand.

And:
Apparently, a while ago an asteroid came within under 100,000 kilometers of the Earth.  If it had hit us, it would have wiped us out.  Poom.  But this happens all the time.  I wonder how many thousands of times it happened before we invented the telescope?  As if we weren't scared of enough stuff, now, we have to train our paranoia at the skies.

And:
I was having a discussion about the G8 conference with a guy at work.  He told me that it was all fine and well that I was complaining about things, but I should look at the people who are actually trying to change the world, trying to make this a better place to live, that I should maybe step back and see this culture for what it is, and that there are millions of people everywhere that are starving to death, that don't have proper food, clothing, shelter, etc.  And I told him that that's true, that there are people out there that are far poorer than I am, and who live far worse lives.  But, I said, I refuse to feel guilty about the fact that I live in Canada, that I can go to the store and buy slurpees, that I live in a technological society, that I can shower and watch tv and surf the Net, eat fast food and go to movies and listen to whatever music I want whenever I want.  I refuse to feel guilty, or to be ashamed of my life.  It sucks that there are poor people, that's true, and if I was poor I'd hate my life.  But it's not my fault that I was born a middle class Canadian, and I refuse to feel guilty and behave like it is-- and people who do that are just hypocrites.  Because it's the very affluent middle-class culture that these so-called "concerned" people despise that enables them to walk around, pretentiously preaching and protesting, making noise, speaking for people in other countries who they've never even met, people in other countries who wouldn't understand what they were doing anyway, who would probably shrug away their activism as something bored crazy rich white kids do during the summer when they're not camping out at Mummsy's and Daddoo's summer acreage.  Or lounging around on the street smoking grass.

And:
And Al Qaeda's still in the news.  They're evil.  They're everywhere.  Etc.

And:
Looks like I've been offered a half tutorial position at the University, and a partial scholarship.  I am quitting my job.  For the second time.

And:
As the first anniversary of 9-11 rolls around, people are finally beginning to mock the collapse of the twin towers.  There are videos of the attack showing up on the Internet-- in newsgroups mainly-- showing the towers going down.  Some of these little videos have goofy banjo music on the sound track.  Others have the usual Death Metal.  You can find them in the "tasteless" newsgroups, or KaZaA, or other places like that.  Usually alongside the death tape crap, the QuickTime and Windows Media encoded footage of suicide stuff like Bud Dyer, Buddhist monks burning themselves in protest, people being flattened by trains, window cleaners plummeting to their deaths, the quite possibly staged late '60s footage of cannibal tribes eating their prisoners of war in "deepest darkest Africa," and all the carnage that Fox won't show you during their Greatest Police Chases "reality" / snuff shows-- the stuff where they tell you everything turned out all right, but that's only because they edited out the part where the guy's severed head flies out the windshield and smears itself all over the pavement.  Doing this to the 9-11 footage is all in extremely bad taste, but, in a way it's a positive sign.  People are mocking it, now.  Maybe that means that life is finally (despite George Bush's best efforts) returning to normal.

And:
And then there's the Starbucks ad that came out a little while ago-- and it lasted about 12 seconds before someone complained and it was pulled.  It advertises the Tazoberry and TazoCitrus fruit smoothies (which I've never had, but the next time I'm at a Starbucks, I will now try-- you bet yer ass!).  The TazoCitrus smoothie is yellow, and the Tazoberry is a pink-red.  Both smoothies are standing side by side in a field.  The grass under the cups is standing tall, and is very thick, and looks like little buildings.  Maybe it's wheatgrass.  I'm not sure.  But, anyway, but the cups are the biggest things in the scene.  The pink-red Tazoberry cup at a slight angle to the TazoCitrus.  The pink is a little lower, like a very familiar perspective shot.  And there's a dragonfly and a butterfly, and they're both converging towards the cups.  There are also three other butterflies in the air.  The sky behind the cups is a baby blue, slightly cloudy.  The clouds are fluffy and look extremely friendly.  And the slogan at the top of the ad reads: COLLAPSE INTO COOL.  Hey, I'll admit it, I laughed.

And:
Support for Bush's War Against Terrorism  is flagging again, and so suddenly this footage of Al Qaeda testing poison gas on puppies surfaces.  And, of course, people are horrified, outraged, and so forth.  I think what they should do is have a tv special-- no, a whole series devoted to all the cute animals that Al Qaeda have killed.  First we can start with the puppies, because that has the recognition factor, then we can move onto kitties because everybody loves kitties.  And then, after that maybe a show on colts and calves, lambs and other sorts of animals like that-- sort of farm-type critters.  And after that, maybe things like wombats because wombats are really really cute when they're little, and kangaroos-- Al Qaeda  goes to Australia.  And, hey, after that the sky's the limit, really.  Maybe Al Qaeda can kill some Meerkats, too.  Meerkats and kinda hip.  I mean, it's totally high-concept: it's got the cute factor, and it's got pathos and death, and then there's all the outrage, too.  I think it'll sell.  And after that's successful there could be a spinoff on Saddam Hussein.

And:
Okay, grasshoppers might not be my favorite people and they'll never have 100% of my respect, but they just earned a few points for cleverness and timing:  I'm walking by a hotel downtown, and it's hot and there are hundreds of hoppers on the sidewalk, on the walls of the hotel, and so forth.  Then this car drives by, and it's some upper middle class white Hip-Hop teenager with his subwoofer cranked, and just at the right time the woofer lets out a big BWOOOOPF.  And then grasshoppers-- all of them-- or at least the ones that haven't been squished-- them all sproing up in unison.  And then the car drives by and the hoppers settle back down.  Today, the grasshoppers get to live.

And:
The sun is too bright.  My eyes ache in the sun.  Especially the angle it's at this time of the year.

And:
Yesterday, I was outside and I think my arms actually burned through my clothes.

And:
A dead bird out by the mall.  Crows picking at it.  The first thought in my mind:  West Nile Virus.

And:
First casualty in Canada of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.  Of course it happens here-- the place where I live.  I don't really know how that makes me feel, except that it's not good.

And:
Mosquitoes everywhere.  Mosquitoes carry West Nile Virus.  I have to stop watching so much tv.

And:
Driving down the street, a Wednesday afternoon.  I've dropped off Kim.  We've been shopping today, and now I'm heading home.  That Bryan Adams / DJ Sammy thing, "Heaven" is playing on the radio.  I turn it up.  Somehow this song is instantly nostalgic.  It fills my head with images of the past, even though I've only head it a half dozen or so times.  I don't know why, but it takes me back, somewhere.  But I'm not sure where-- or even how.  It's a cheesy song, but somehow it instills a feeling of loss in me.  A earlier today I bought a copy of In A Silent Way by Miles Davis.  It's sitting on the seat right next to me.  I'll probably take it home, now, slip it into my computer, listen to it on headphones, and brood about some vague unfocused loss.

And:
A while ago, in the 'States, a teen girl went missing.  Then a small child.  Then some babies.  Then some guy kidnapped two teen girls but they caught him and killed him before he could kill the girls.  All the events are utterly unconnected, and yet people are wandering around like paranoid zombies, treating this like an epidemic.  Like there's some sort of cause-effect relationship, here-- but they're missing the cause.  "What's going on?  What's wrong with the world?  Why are these things all happening now?"  They're all acting like this is some sort of aftereffect of 9-11, like it's the work of some secret cabal.  Actually, all it is, is a small media blitz focusing on missing teenagers and children.  Kidnappings are no more an epidemic right now than they were last year, or last decade.  The events are reported with proper timing in order to generate ratings, in order to sell commercial time.  That's all.  It's just the tragedy-of-choice of the moment.  I mean, what makes last week's kidnapped highschool student any different from the thousands of other highschool students that vanish each year?  What makes the baby found murdered in a dumpster two days ago any different from all the ones found in dumpsters six months ago?  Absolutely nothing.  Except of course for live footage, famous reporters, and a RealMedia feed.  Except for maybe better agents.

And:
Kim doesn't like the grasshoppers.  They make her squeak and flail.  They don't really have that effect on me, but sometimes when I walk by a fence, or some wire, and they're all there, hundreds of them lined up, staring at me, it reminds me a little bit too much of The Birds.  I do tend to lose my cool when they fly at my eyes, though.  But, eventually the temperature will cool.  Then the grasshoppers will die.  Things will bounce back.  Either that or the glaciers will all met and the hoppers will all drown as the continent is flooded with billions of gallons of civilization-destroying water.  Whatever's cool with me.

And:
It's 2002, and I'm sitting in my car, and I'm listening to Hayden and Sonic Youth on the radio.  The other day, I saw a Shonen Knife video on tv.  We're in the middle of '80s nostalgia, and now '90s are coming back.  Soon there will be a Nirvana revival.  And Pearl Jam.  And Codeine and Cub.  They're all coming back.  The return of Grunge, just as it's fading away.  '90s nostalgia is in the air.  I can smell it.  Already.

And:
I get too many headaches.  And I should see a doctor.

And:
It's a plague.  Disasters are everywhere.  But that only goes so far, especially when you can see through them like a pro.
 
 

Next:  Meanwhile, back at the present tense....
 
 

Epilogue 27e.
Epilogue 27c.
INDEX.
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