We knew this would happen.
Fail to blog long enough, and horrible things begin to happen. Take just now. We actually picked up the phone to call the boss, to ask him if he had anything for us to do. This moment marks the nadir of our career as a wage slave. It has turned a world champion work-shirking bureaucrat into a pathetic eager beaver, actually ready to beg for more work please. Soon we'll be saying things like, "I like to think of the job as a second home."
Once we were a tender sprog, and life seemed our oyster. We would grow up to be a poetry-sprouting beatnik, joyously jobless and with a goatee that formed a perfect point. Oh, the delusions of youth. Instead of swinging a jug of burgundy at a poetry reading in San Francisco, we found ourselves sober and reliant upon a regular salary to keep us afloat financially. In short, we failed, as most people do, to avoid the flail of boring normalcy.
But at least we had our blog. It was our fuck you to the world of nine to five, and to the whole mediocre creation that is known as the United States of America. We could rail and rant and still get paid, by the man, for a job he didn't even know we were doing. We could let loose the dogs of futility, and spend tens of thousands of words failing to communicate what it feels like to live in our skin. It was perfect.
But now we're reduced to this. We all go under in the end, the better angels of our nature cursing the dying of the light, the lesser angels cursing the dawn that left us high and dry here in the first place. None of it means anything, but we all need something to stake our lives on. It's a paradox, and it's beautiful so long as that something doesn't get up and walk away. Then you're truly fucked, and the world is as a place of perpetual darkness, and in your dreams you stand up and scream at your sleeping self to wake up, wake up, you're a frog and the water is slowly getting hotter.
You are one of a kind, Mike.
Posted by: Bryon | October 27, 2011 at 05:23 PM
So why doesn't your sleeping self wake up?
Posted by: Jan Martin Löhndorf | October 28, 2011 at 01:22 AM
This post should be carved in a tablet or two. And that's all I have to say about that.
Posted by: Martijn | October 28, 2011 at 02:48 AM
Pointedly poignant
Posted by: Esther | October 28, 2011 at 04:32 AM
I suppose this is as good time to ask as a any, but what's the story behind your profile pic here? Sorry but I came in late.
Posted by: Dan | October 28, 2011 at 07:00 AM
Dan, what a fine question that is! I have wondered about the picture myself for years, but asking about is was not something I though I'd do. I let the photograph take on a life of its own, being an abstract Sign, a poetic non-fact, a symbol. But perhaps there IS a story too.
Posted by: Martijn | October 28, 2011 at 07:17 AM
Thank you all kindly. Dan and Martijn, the photo is of Holger Meins, member of the RAF or Baader-Meinhof Group, being led off by police. I love his facial expression. He unfortunately died by hunger strike in prison in 1974. We like to think of him as one of our brothers in outrage against a system that collectively sucks eggs.
Posted by: UF MIKE | October 28, 2011 at 08:36 AM
Love that picture too: the archetypical face of screamin' & kickin' protest. I just thought it was either you during your Finest Hour or some American news pic. Who would have guessed the Rote Armee Fraction? ... 'Nobody expects the Rote Armee Fraction'! hê hê.
Have a great non-sucking weekend!
Posted by: Martijn | October 28, 2011 at 10:00 AM
Nobody ever expects the RAF--well, not since they gave up the ghost, that is. You have a great weekend too--and hang in, my brother. Don't let the bastards get you down.
Posted by: UF MIKE | October 28, 2011 at 11:29 AM
When will the warehouses of international finance burn?
Thanks for that. I feel stupid though, I absorbed all that stuff as a teenager, & rather immaturely as a grandfather, still wear a RAF badge on my lapel.
Posted by: Dan | October 28, 2011 at 07:13 PM
Dan, der Kampf geht weiter!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unut8Hn13aI
Posted by: Jan Martin Löhndorf | October 29, 2011 at 03:03 AM
Thanks Jan Martin. Although I don't have German, I feel that we understand the international language of struggle, & I'm afraid 'der Kampf' is all that my children will be inheriting from me.
Posted by: Dan | October 29, 2011 at 10:15 PM
"The struggle will go on!"
Although I am afraid, currently the enemy is on the winning end. But ... read the first line again.
Posted by: Jan Martin Löhndorf | October 30, 2011 at 06:23 AM