1 – 26 – 2013 THE DIGITAL NO-MAN’S LAND

I truly get a kick out of scrolling the news feed on Fart Book. It’s like that comic strip Doonesbury. Everyone is busting heads about politics, religion, immigration, gay-marriage, gun control, terrorism, True Blood, American Idol, who in the Twilight series has the best ass. Nearly gives me appendicitis from laughing so damn hard.

               
            People truly are ludicrous. They don’t realize that the best reality show that exists is for a person like me to sit on the side-lines watching them go back and forth over who has the better opinion. I could record a one-person laugh track from all the combined guffaws I've had just this year, and it would sound a whole lot more convincing than that shit they use on “The Big Bang Theory.”

               
            It must have been nice living in the old days. That is, a day when you had heroes such as John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Ernest Hemingway  John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, DiMaggio, etc. You pick a word fight with guys like that and they’d lay you out at the foot of the bar. Ah, good times. Nowadays people are all talk. They never follow through with anything. The default response is always, “Well, I’ll sue you.” Fuck off, I don’t give a shit. My credit is already in the toilet.

             
            People think they are these big god-damn heroes, just because they can demean someone from their computer. “I’m so brave. I can type filth on my keyboard, and transmit it to the world within seconds.” Let me ask you people something. What makes you any different from the tyrannical Military mind who presses the button in his own country, launching the missiles to another country full of brown people several thousand miles away? Not a fuckin’ thing. Your actions are just as damaging to the human psyche, and the societal impact is even more devastating, because it has longevity.

               
           If any of you had any balls you’d give up typing hate from that keyboard, and actually leave the house, and use it to smash someone’s skull. That would be more civilized, and productive I think than what you do already, which is sit in a dark living room, plunking out letters to your inferiors all the way on the other side of the world, safely sealed away within the confines of your vast digital solar-system, hiding behind a user-name, and free from any repercussion or retribution. Even if someone does say something right away that hurts your feelings, you can always find things to cheer you up quick. You've got porn just a few clicks away, after all.

I guess it’s the longevity of your actions that speaks volumes of your character. You must know at least on some deep subconscious level that what you print on the web will never disappear. You want that staying power. You lust after that so-called greatness of being able to leave your permanent shit-stain smeared all over the unsuspecting internet community. “See, I did that? That was me. My beautiful words are magnificent aren't they?” The words were never yours to begin with. You just vomited them out of your fingers in a different order from what they were in when they went into your ear.

The truth of the matter is, we are all going to be held accountable in some way. Whether by the law, karma, society, or America’s Got Talent is something that only time can tell. More often than not it will be the one true Supreme Being. That omnipresent God of Logic that we all know is there, because he exists right within the center of your own otherwise foolish heads. Him, her, it … whatever is always there acting upon your instinctual consciences impulses to tell you … “Um, you are a GOD DAMNED COWARD, and you are also completely full of shit.”

Some teacher once said “The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.” Where is the god damn logic in that? How can it be a stupid question if there HAS BEEN no question? You all have the answer already. The more I watch humanity’s intellect dissolve into a real-life rendition of Brave New World, the more I realize that a person truly does learn a hell of a lot more by simply watching, remembering, and keeping their damn mouth SHUT. LEARN from the stupidity you see. Don’t copy it. Whether life imitates art, or it’s the other way around, I think we can all agree that most of the time the result is the same. Shit and shit both attract the same thing:  a whole lot of diseased flies.

I am by no means an innocent bystander here. I've been guilty of just as much self-inflicted character assassination as the next person. I know exactly what is going to destroy me someday, and it would accomplish nothing to sit and brood over it. I may as well continue to accomplish my goals while I wait. Once that destructive force arrives to block my path, by driving that proverbial Hemingway solution into my mouth, I’ll deal with it. But there’s no point in wasting however many years I have left on this filthy latrine of a world building myself a psychological bomb-shelter in the basement of my mind. When it happens, it happens, and no preparation will make it any less distasteful.

It just occurred to me in recent years that each and every person truly has their own judge and jury that will destroy them someday. There is one for every living human, and most people have several. The truth of the matter is, however, that no matter how many trillions of muses there are to condemn each and every person, all of us have three in common.

First there is the person that judges us from within. He is the harshest, and least merciful. “We are our own worst critics,” as the saying goes. That person is the monkey on our back from the day we are born, and he never leaves, since his claws are embedded within our soul and our psyche,’ and rightfully so. Who wants to go outside, after all, wearing a tie and coat that don’t match?

Next is the law. Not that the law serves much purpose anymore. It’s more of just a formality I think. It seems holding people accountable for anything, whether they are guilty of it, or not went out of style with the birth of Freudian psychology, The American Civil Liberties Union, and the phenomenon of waiting in line two and half fucking hours to sing Brittany Spears at “karaoke.” By that I mean that the law is a broken system of judgment, about as powerfully relevant to someone’s overall livelihood as is The Queen of England. It is a figure-head of menace, and nothing more. Just so long as you've got a slippery enough lawyer in your back pocket, one that kisses the asses of the correct special interest groups, and you live in the state of Florida. You’ll get away with it every time. Just ask Casey Anthony.

The next judge is society. These are the bystanders like me, who sit on the sidelines, enjoying the show while you go up in flames. These judges need no jury, and they've bypassed the appeals process entirely. Their justice system moves swiftly. They are your doctors, your teachers, your neighbors, your priests, your so-called fans, and even your family and friends. These folks are the quickest to rake you over the coals, and they don’t even need evidence. They won’t be confused with the facts, and unlike The American Bill of Rights, cruel and unusual punishment is their stock and trade. It was society that convicted Jesus, Joan of Arc, Joseph Hauptmann, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, and so on. The repercussions of their judgments are the worst kind. You wouldn't even need to be incarcerated to feel the heat of that kind of scrutiny, and you can often times wind up becoming a prisoner of your own shame. You can’t find work. You can’t create, or do things that are meaningful to you. Oftentimes death is the only solution, and sometimes not even that is an escape. For the residue of your personae will be left behind to continue experiencing that everlasting torment … and it will spread to those few that stood by you as well, creating snowballs of hate.

I’m sure I've outlined nothing new here. I firmly believe that this kind of insight is implanted deep within everyone’s brains from the moment they are born. Whether or not it gets activated and launched into your conscious is another story, however. You need the right code, and for some it never occurs. The only way that is ever going to change I suppose is when states finally start offering teaching credentials for Common Sense Courses in public school. That will never happen. Like Scatman Crothers said in the film “The Shinning.” “Some places are like people. Some shine, and some don’t.” Well, I think when it comes to common sense, some minds are like characters from “Twilight.” Some shine … most don’t. At least not anymore.

Pleasant dreams

T. Wilson