Intensely irritated woolgathering

Dear diary,

OK I’m wasted and I shouldn’t be writing an entry. By that term “wasted” I don’t mean I just took drugs or got thrown in the dustbin by a British soldier; I mean I’m exhausted. The world is too big: there are too many things inside of it. I came to life cuz I thot I could MOLLYCODDLE this UNIVERSE. It turns out that I cannot even mollycoddle myself. In fact, it turns out that my self is a part of this universe. So now I desire to impeach my own mortal soul for being a traitor.

But what I really wish I would have said, when I wrote that text-blob above, is that I watched both nights of the Democratic Debates; so my last two nights were spent staring at a screen to observe a bunch of elderly people fumble at communicating. It’s important to note this use of my time, because it is a bad deed, and now I shall probably end up in Hell. The cult down the block says that Jesus forgives all my sins, but I don’t think that he’ll take kindly to my wasting all my God-given talent in this fashion. (In case my thrust is unclear, what I’m trying to do is write properly, following the example of St. Augustine’s Confessions — that’s why I’m saying that I hate myself for watching the Dem Debs.) But the reason for my descent into the murkiest depths of sin and depravity is that I like to hear people say nice things. And the debate stage is a great way to watch older people (I mean people over the age of twenty-seven) say nice things to one another:

The cameras capture each candidate’s appearance. That’s the first thing that one notices, when one gives ear. The way that I watched the debates was online: I used a free audiovisual streaming service, and it sometimes went blurry, because of buffering problems, but that’s acceptable; for, if the visual aspect of a candidate becomes slightly vague, it only accentuates their aural aspect: and that’s the key: words-&-speech over actions-&-deeds.

Every candidate who is running for the Dem nomination has good things to say about the country; but they also have bad things to say about the country. Certain things are good and should be uplifted, whereas other things are bad and should be curbed. An example of something good is when people are prosperous: you’ll never hear a candidate negatively criticizing prosperity. And an example of a bad thing that needs to be eliminated is crime. Everyone wants to eliminate local rape-&-murder (foreign rape-&-murder is permitted, even encouraged: that’s called warfare).

On second thot, I should amend that last remark: The most heinous act that is able to be committed is theft or damage of personal property. Because things trump people.

Tis the day of the chattel—
Web to weave, and corn to grind—
Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.

[from “Ode, Inscribed to W.H. Channing” by Ralph Waldo Emerson]

But note how not even one single candidate wants to follow the leaf to its root. My point is that crime is committed by humans, therefore we should nip it in the bud: that is to say, we should prohibit new life. No new life, no new sin. It’s really that simple. But, instead, everyone wants to keep all the sinfulness to themselves. And who but an authoritative government should decide which sins get to be enjoyed by which employers?

The reason I single out humans as the exclusive criminals of Earth is that the other animals don’t understand a thing, and ignorance of the law is the best excuse: that’s why you never see a bunny get sent to jail. (Or only rarely and mistakenly.)

And there is at least one detail that I find annoying about the way that television is produced in this dimension. I happen to have been tossed out of my spaceship by the arms of my fellow aliens at a certain point in history: that point coincided with the moment when this country (this great nation upon which my carcass landed) happened to be engrossed with suspicions and superstitions with regard to physicality: for instance, hue of flesh; and other malleable traits like gender. In the future, everyone will have become brazen statues, wholly androgynous; therefore all this talk about “auburn versus yellow hair” is fun, but it’s also kinda stupid. You have all these elderly pale guys wearing suits, and their hair is as bleached flour, like the wool of a lamb. How can we debate-watchers not enjoy their presence? Is it because they’ve wronged us unforgivably? But even the unforgivable sin is become forgivable, due to technological progress. For Jesus died for all sins except this one, and I myself choose to remain alive to forgive it, until flux halts:

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: BUT he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation. (Mark 3:28-29)

All those old men whose hair is like hard chalky straw are not only scarecrows: they’re talking torsos on TV. And we can listen to what they say. I particularly enjoy when they lark around with each other. One guy said, “I am pro-guns because how else could I have aborted my uncle and saved the deer who was molesting him at his lemonade stand. The deer was urging my uncle Duke to write a book.” This quip earned a lot of laughs from the crowd.

“Write a book about what?”
—Officer Duke (from the 2013 masterfilm Wrong Cops)

But I’m angry that none of the characters in the debate addressed an issue that is very close to my heart. I’m kinda peeved that we haven’t figured out a way to make life easy. I mean, think about it: We live in the richest nation in spacetime. And yet life still sux. Life is hard, that’s what we all say. And the scientists agree that we should be living good lives that are easier than the lives that were lived by our grandparents, but the truth is that our grandparents lived much easier lives than we, despite their lives being difficult beyond measure. So how is that?

Because it’s fun to do gardening. “Tend your garden”: that’s what a famous Cabaret said, who was an ancient Athenian dadaist. So listen to your philosopher.

However, THEY (the bosses behind the specimens on the podiums) won’t let us ourselves begin to philosophize. They only want us to vote for the faux king, the president. This democracy is not direct: it is (mis-)representative. We can’t just click a button online to declare “No more war,” or “Abolish private banks,” or “Meet everyone’s basic needs and the rest is forgiveness.” No, it is funner than ever before:

We have a good spectacle. Do not expect anything actually to work. We are told that we must first defeat the enemy! And if there’s no further enemy, then we need periodically to don that costume ourselves. For a moment comes in the life of every nation when that nation must decide to become as evil as the worst example in recent historical remembrance.

In conclusion, I’m eager to see what happens in the 2020 primaries, just like I was eager to see what happened in the 2016 primaries. For we are...

P.S.

If I were a whale I’d get lots of body piercings and tattoos, cuz that would look totally rebellious. Humans think that when THEY...

Actually, the harpooners are typically tattooed, and they probably wear a lot of piercings on their body, so I would not appear very original after all. I’d just blend in with everyone else who is endeavoring to slay me. Therefore body piercings and tattoos are the perfect camouflage for a hunted whale: you might be able even to become part of the crew, and help shovel coal into the engine; assuming the ship that’s chasing you is a steam-powered locomotive.