To rust unburnished

Even if you’re one of those people who claims “I’m a real go-getter!” you have to admit, it’s a great relief to allow yourself to give up: to throw in the towel, to call it quits.

What if scientists cloned a human in a pod at a laboratory? Wouldn’t that be kind of like an insect laying an egg? “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” That’s what Dave the astronaut says to the computer HAL 9000, in the movie 2001 (1968). And HAL says: “I’m sorry, Dave; I’m afraid I can’t do that.” I think that mammalian “live birth” is more intimate than reptilian egg-laying. But for some reason I see turtles as being more in touch with their emotions than are humans.

But what is this obsession with reproducing our kind? Is our kind really all that important? What if we just opted to let ourselves enter extinction? I’m not saying that we would do anything to hasten our demise; but what if the human species, all at once, decided to leave well enough alone, with regard to survival? Would any other living creature care?

What if horses could sue humans in court for all the stupid movies and shows they’ve had to participate in? All those stupid westerns.

Yesterday the fabric on the inside of my walking shoe wore bare and exposed a piece of hard plastic—it was the shell of the shoe, like its skeleton—and this hard plastic was digging into my heel; so, being that I’m a clone of Achilles, I decided to shop for some replacement footwear. Now, I recently watched a documentary that unveiled the revolting conditions of an overseas shoe factory, so I wanted to avoid that particular company’s products; but then I suffered a couple thoughts:

1. maybe all shoemakers treat their employees poorly, so there’s no escaping participation in this slave-economy (besides going barefoot or pacing the asphalt in what my grandma used to call one’s “stocking-feet”);
2. if we all boycott a brand for the bad way it treats its employees, the corporation might nosedive, which would lead it to treat its employees even worse than it does at present.

None of this, as far as I can tell, justifies either economic action or abstinence. It’s all just a trap: the system is sick. So I bought a pair of shoes from a company that I hadn’t yet heard anything evil about, and felt guilty for the rest of the day.

Yeah, I think I’m done with politics. I would never have cared in the first place; and this election season would have come and gone in the background, out of focus, as usual, without my concern, if it weren’t for that blasted socialist fueling my hope. Now I’m twice as jaded as before, after seeing how rudely they treated the guy. It assures me that no one is ever going to be allowed to fix this mechanical beast known as the United States. We’re just going to have to let it thrash around the world and devour and slay until it eats its own self up. One almost wishes there were another predatory empire out there that could intervene by saying: Dear friend, you’ve grown addicted to imperialism.

But how great will that feel!!! to be able to wake and read a novel instead of checking the news in the morning. I never read the news until this year. And if some jerks show up at my door and tell me that I’m being deported on account of my love of poetry, or because I look to them like a snooty hipster, or since I can’t sufficiently convince them that I hate what they hate (I only hate groupthought), and I won’t recant my statement that the best movie of this year is NOT the latest blockbuster but rather Dogville, even though that film was released in 2003—then such is life: I will try to love my fate.

A truly great narrative artwork is impervious to spoiling and needs no “spoiler alert” when spoken of; because, the more that one knows about it, the more one loves it; thus, to learn a film’s ending before seeing it is to begin one’s initial encounter with a head start. So I spoil nothing when I inform those who have never watched the aforesaid movie Dogville, which was directed by Lars von Trier, that I love it because of its final scene where Grace permits the town to be set aflame and allows everyone to perish yet saves the dog alive.

One last radar blip about the topic of politics, before I leave it forever. The hollow conman who’s currently representing the right-wing half of the two evils (I’m referring to our bipartisan nightmare) has been reported as making pejorative comments about certain races of people, religions, etc. (Are there races of people? This is something to think about.) I just want to go on record as saying that all the “types” of people that this fellow disparages should be combined into one single person, whose image should be duplicated via magic mirrors enough times to fill every office of government in this nation. Only then will we become “great again” for the first time ever. As it is written in my holy manifesto The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes:

. . . she who had lain perhaps ten thrillion times with countless different flairs of men and women, and married both hosts of seraphim, and was able to speak every parlance of body language with fluency, at long last anointed her knightly celibataire, thus making him king: she went to bed as if a virgin, and verily persuaded her husband that she was one. Thereafter she and her handmaidens remained the Queen. And this is why people say: “The honor of a harlot never spoils, but is renewed like the moon.”