Frantik Girl
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
America the Clothes Horse
I stamp my foot and shake my tiny fist and cry, “This is America.”
We’ve always been an unhealthy nation, with periods of excessive binging followed by equally excessive purging. If you listen, you can hear the retching sound emanating from the National Toilet now… we’re ridding ourselves of the beautiful feast we consumed during the 90’s.
America’s getting skinny again, shedding the pounds she put on under our former McPresident. America can fit into all her old clothes from the 1950’s… but she’s got dementia from lack of nutrition, and her teeth are rotting. Never mind, she’ll just keep quiet and smile with her lips closed.
This cycle isn’t unique to America. Rome glutted itself on the known world, consuming every race and country it could reach with its greasy fingers. When things got bad, and the Empire’s bloated, fat clouded heart burst from all the excess weight, the Romans did the exact same things we’re doing now: turned to Christianity and made war. After a strict diet of Vandals and Visigoths, Rome split itself in to two sexy new empires: the Byzantine and the Holy Roman.
“I lost half the known world in just two centuries, thanks Vandals!”
Grave historical inaccuracies aside, I want to point out some of the disturbing parallels between Roma and the United States.
I had a history teacher. He was a small, repressed little Italian man who could never reconcile his own estimation of his talent and intellect with the fact that he was teaching freshman history in a mediocre California high school. He loved the Greeks, maintained that civilization peaked in the Hellenistic period and that those darn Romans had ruined the sanctity of man/boy love forever (he didn’t say that directly, but the subtext was pretty clear if you knew him). To him, Americans were the new Romans. He called us a bunch of little Romans with a sneer on his lips. Damn his petty soul, but he was right.
Since I learned nothing from his class, everything I know about Roman history I got from I, Claudius.
Julius Caesar (hereafter referred to as Jules) was nothing more or less than a highly popular politician with military successes behind his name. He came, he saw, he conquered… he even got as far north as England and kicked their blue faced asses. Sure, they revolted and kicked him back across the Channel in a matter of months, but it still looked good on his resume.
Back at home, the Senate was falling apart. Militias were springing up in the Southern territories, complaining about states rights and heavy handed government interference. There were threats of civil war and all was chaos, meanwhile, an apathetic Roman public’s only concern was attending the gladiatorial games and finding out who was going to be the next Survivor.
Jules returned home. He had bought the unswerving loyalty of his great legions by dramatically increasing the defense budget, then he went to the Middle East and stamped out Mark Antony’s terrorist network, cementing his hold on the hearts and minds of the Senate and the public. Claiming to be a ‘uniter’, Jules consolidated his power. Using the threat of military force for leverage, he gently convinced the Senate to declare him Emperor, and later, a god.
Like a senile grandmother, history repeats herself.
If the parallels aren’t already obvious, then allow me to further illuminate them: as the only superpower, the United States exerts unilateral political, military and cultural control over most of the world; in the name of stability and safety, the supreme military commander is waging a series of wars across the world, resulting in occupations which give him and his allies access to money and resources that he then funnels back to the military industrial complex that supports him; the Senate is weak, polarized and unable to legislate, willingly ceding power to the president without demanding any accountability; the populace is uninformed about politics, both national and international, cowed by fear of an unseeable, unknowable enemy and clinging to the skirts of the leader who promises to keep them safe through overwhelming military force.
That said, I think it is unlikely that Bush will change his name to George W. Augustus and declare himself Caesar. There are still too many Brutuses (Bruti?) in positions of power and wealth to allow something so ludicrous. As much as I deride the American public, I think at least a solid quarter of them might have issues with an Emperor. I think the danger is a great deal more subtle. Whatever happens in the next election, whether the shrub is re-elected or not, we are all witnesses to the end of the American Republic. The system has become too dysfunctional to sustain itself much longer. We engage in Dadaist political revolutions like the 2000 recount and the California recall election, and as a result, representative democracy becomes increasingly irrelevant. Power will shift almost exclusively to the executive, who will be able to force ideologically like-minded judges through the rubber stamp Senate and into the courts, thereby reducing the autonomy of the other two governmental branches. The only counter to presidential power will lie in the States, which while financially cut off from the Federal coffers, will still be subject to Federal law. Unable to affect change at the national level, desperate voters will vent their frustration on their local politicians, electing smiling charlatans and libertarian chest beaters over true reformers and strong political voices, further reducing the power of the grass roots. The presidency will become imperial in practice, if not in name, because it is the only branch of government that can still effect change. If this trend continues, then it is simply a matter of waiting a generation before a president can safely claim to be the uncontested and supreme leader for life.
This is all just theory of course.
Too Young to be Old
One of the (myriad) reasons why I dread getting older, and why my next birthday, which begins with a THREE and ends with a ZERO holds such terror for me, is because I regularly get a sneak preview of what aging will feel like. I’ve had back problems since I was in junior high school… one day something riiiiiiiipped back there, and periodically ever since, my back just gets hurty. Usually, when someone asks, I just say “Oh, I hurt my back.” But today, when someone asked, I called it “Chronic Back Pain.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth I could have clawed my own eyes out… because I had become one of those people with “Chronic Back Pain.” The man I told this to was in his sixties, and he had far too much sympathy in his face. I felt like an old lady, complaining about her sciatica… when in fact I was a young lady, complaining about her sciatica. The point being, that young people shouldn’t complain about sciatica at all.
I am young. I’m older than I’ve ever been, admittedly, but there’s no help for that. Back when life expectancies topped out at 60, I would be middle aged. I’m almost the same age as my mother was when she had me. My problem is and always has been my weight. I could be one of those people who make a life change through the miracle of Yoga or phen phen or Subway and run marathons until I’m 92… but I doubt it; so I’m faced with the very real and very frightening possibility that I was my healthiest back in college, and it’s straight downhill from here.
Perhaps these incipient health problems wouldn’t feel so insurmountable if I had access to healthcare. Were I to wake up tomorrow without feeling in my legs, I would be forced to weigh the possibility of not walking against the price of an emergency room visit. Physical ruin versus financial ruin is an ugly choice. Already I know that my dental health has been compromised by my poverty. Once, I sat at the Georgetown Dental clinic for four hours, so that I could get one lead/ mercury alloy filling at the bargain basement price of $25. Only I never got the filling, because they’d exceeded their number of charity cases for the day.
But let me be honest. It’s not their fault that I’m fat and my teeth have cavities. Poverty has not stopped me from eating well and often. I just wish I was one of those women who put on all her weight in her chest. Then I could blame my back problems on my extraordinarily large breasts.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Birth and Death (in that order)
Oy, she's going on about death again... who does she think she is, Woody Allen?
I saw a movie recently... I don't remember what it was, but people spoke with English accents, so it must have been cultural... it might have been I, Clavdivs (which I highly recommend, because despite the designer bedsheets and Telemundo production values, it is superbly written and acted). Anyway, the characters were talking about death and one of the characters said, "I am no more afraid of Death than I was afraid to be born..." Which is a great quote and puts the whole thing in perspective; but which at the same time raises whole new questions about pre-birth, oblivion and the soul.
(It was SPARTACUS... not I, Clavdivs. And Kirk Douglas was talking to Tony Curtis and neither of them had English accents. In fact, one of the funniest parts of that movie is listening to Tony Curtis try to be a Roman poet/ singer with his atrocious New York brogue. Like I said, I highly recommend I, Clavdivs...)
I'm not a big believer in the soul, so for the purpose of this piece, we'll just assume that there is none. If you happen to believe in the soul, then you can think anything you like about pre-birth... like those fluffy, pseudo-Christian movies that come out every five years or so where the soul is in heaven talking to St. Peter about what new baby body he's gonna get... then whoops, a white soul gets put in a black body... or whoops, a former president is accidentally put in the body of an Indian girl... then hilarity ensues and people learn valuable life lessons. I'd rather avoid all that.
Given that after consciousness, there is only oblivion, does it then follow that there is oblivion before consciousness as well?
The tragedy of death is that we are conscious of ourselves, our lives and the perceived value of that life. Evolution has wired us that way. It's only once we become conscious of our self (around 5 or so) that we begin to fear death. It is also at this time of consciousness, that we begin to form long term memories, the basis of our concept of self. We have no memory of non-existence, yet we all didn't-exist before we did exist, and non-existence is just as natural a state, since we have spent the majority of capital "t" Time in a state of non-existence. Once we're done existing, we'll return to not existing and be none the wiser. I posit therefore that life is the oddity, not death... we're all a bunch of living freaks spinning out in the middle of the universe having consciousness. The rest of the universe must shake its head and cluck its tongue at our foolishness.
Which, of course, makes us all rebels... a bunch of Sparticai painting our faces blue and shaking our fists at non-existence and saying, "You'll never take... our freedom!" Living well, and happy, and eating foods that are bad for you and having good sex with bad people and writing novels and poetry and fighting entropy through punk rock are all appropriate ways to behave.
Happy
Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy, Happy.
(I’ve decided that this web page has gotten too gloomy)
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Santa, the Bookish Hooker
I’m currently working at the Ban Macy*s (né Marché) on the seventh floor, behind the walls. When I walk off the elevator every morning, the first thing I see is Holiday Lane, which is their annual Christmas installation. I’m not writing to rail against a corporate juggernaut who’s collective brain is so twisted and evil as to thrust Christmas decorations upon an unwilling public in the middle of September… although I could.
A little to the right of the elevators, smothered between an artificial tree dripping with gaudy ornaments and a half wall separating the atrocities of Holiday Lane from the quiet dignity of mattresses, stands a plump little Santa Claus statue. The jolly fat man stands about four and a half feet tall and he’s carved and painted in exquisite detail.
Santa has full, red, pouty lips, brightly rouged cheeks, large bedroom eyes accented by green eye shadow. His shiny red velvet suit clings suggestively to his chest, buttock and chubby belly. His hip is cocked seductively as he leans against the street lamp, reading what appears to be a small green address book. Santa’s prowling the streets; turning tricks to help him fill his bag of toys.
Times must be tough in Christmas town, because Santa has to put on the red light. Maybe he’s developed a junk habit. Mrs. Claus is in Al-Anon, learning tough love, while the elves are in the back of the toy shop passing the crack pipe. Old Saint Nick has gone down hill since he crashed the sleigh and got his forth DUI. Now he’s dropped out, walking the streets… getting the shit beat out of him by his pimp, Jack Frost. He looks pretty now, in the dim twilight, but the heavy makeup hides the bruises and the sallow cheeks. In another couple of years, Santa’ll loose some of front teeth, and ol’ Jack will take him out of the hotel trade and set him up on a corner next to Dairy Queen… the kind of neighborhood where the johns don’t look too closely at the merchandise.
If the junk doesn’t kill the jolly fat man, he’ll hit rock bottom one day. Then he can choose to curl up under some bridge and die, or to enter the system, get cleaned up at the Betty Ford Center, buy some dentures and tell his story to Oprah.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Baby Seals
Judy Garland isn’t as great as I’d always heard. Maybe I’m hearing the booze and pills in her voice, but she ain’t all that. Her voice was gossamer in Wizard of Oz of course, pure and playful and clear. Seems in later years, it got a bit muddy, and playful turned into campy. I’ll admit, I’ve never been a fan of camp. Give me satire, irony, or pure melodrama… leave camp for the Boyscouts.
What I’m really talking about is expectations, and how they’re shattered by reality. The great landmarks are always so much shorter then they look in the brochures. The Mona Lisa is the size of a postage stamp. The most beautiful scenery in the world, is still just rocks and water arranged in a unique pattern with some garnish scattered around. Winning the lottery won’t prevent the icy hand of death from clutching your heart someday. The perfect lover has morning breath and a finite number of increasingly boring stories to tell at parties. Lobster is chewy and messy to eat. Your favorite TV show will always jump the shark after its best season. The beach smells and there’s jellyfish in the water. Dogs are dumb, cats pee on your bed.
I could go on, but if I did I might jump out a window… or I would if the maintenance people hadn’t screwed the windows shut in order to keep people from getting any fresh air whatsoever in this rusty, dank little department store.
I have an expectation that when I work someplace I hate, I will at least be compensated in money. I’ve had that expectation dashed now, as several of my paychecks have bounced, leaving me with an empty savings account. What do you do when this part of the social contract breaks down? The rational thing is to keep working, assuming that your employer is good for the money and will get it to you eventually. Or will they? At what point does good faith break down and ugly legal words take its place?
