Blathering on Thursday by crimson echo

To start with, there are far too many of Them.

What "Them?" What do you mean, what "Them?" Did you or did you not just ask me the question "what is wrong with people?" That is the first response. There are too many.

For instance, They are crowded enough in some places that you can't take a step without causing injury and/or a most colorful display of someone's knowledge of expletives. They're always slamming into each other at varying rates of speed--from Low (meaning on-foot or riding a bicycle) to Medium (normal vehicle speeds, anywhere between 35-70 mph) to What-the-hell-are-you-doing?! (that's the guy you see zooming past on a motorbike in excess of 110). Then there's the fact that this constant suffusion of other peoples' existence into yours results in a requirement for communication skills--something that the modern American has long since left behind in favor of first-person shooters and MySpace. The fact of our lacking communication skills brings about conflicts, once again in a range from Low ("what did you say about my mother?") to Medium (any combination of projectile, melee and hand-to-hand combat) to Wow-would-you-look-at-that-mushroom-cloud.

That is problem one.

Secondly, They attempt to extricate Themselves from Their world and are therefore challenged to understand exactly what in the name of the Four-Fold Bills they are supposed to be doing with their lives. Most of Them spend an absurd amount of time within these little brick boxes They call "buildings," which have smaller boxes inside referred to as "rooms," which have yet smaller boxes they call "Hey Frank get back in your cubicle and do something for once." Why They create such confusion when there's a perfectly good world outside, I don't know. Unfortunately for Them, there had better be a damn large number of people realizing the existence of the perfectly-good-world-outside very very soon, or else it will be destroyed by mini-malls, pollution and OPEC. This problem of buildings also contributes to difficulty one, Crowding.

Thirdly, They seem to spend a large amount of time in the shuffling of small rectangles printed in multitudinous colors and small bits of metal with odd inscriptions on the sides. Whether or not They realize that this is a stupid activity and should have a stop put to it right now is beyond my comprehension, since the last I saw everyone in the world was hunting through their little boxes in an attempt to gather spare change for a payphone. They all look up to these things called "sports athletes" and "celebrities" for their ideal lifestyles, completely ignoring the fact that the behavior of these creatures is simply atrocious and if the entire world started behaving in that way there wouldn't be much of a planet left now would there. In the maniacal search for the small bits of paper called "bills" and the small bits of metal called "coins" or "change," They often pretend that this stuff called "money" is more important than a great many important things--among them, family, morality, human life, happiness, a point of view, intelligence, and this amazing thing I'm going to call "kladvareshki-ehtn" or "a Future for the Race." This money thing contributes both to problems one and three.

Problem Fourth and final (for this entry, though the odds are many others can be found) states that people, as a rule, are stupid. This can be demonstrated by taking an objective look at the political structures of most of the civilized countries, the fact that many of these countries put most of their small bits of paper into structures designed to facilitate horrible violence and mass terror, and the fact that a man stayed in office for two consecutive terms even after saying that "I have opinions. Strong opinions. I just don't always agree with them." The fact that many among the populace could do much better with their intelligence but are just not treated in such a manner that the thought ever occurs to them is only testament to this overall stupidity. This problem contributes to problems one through three and a great many others besides.

Now that that's settled, I have but one thing to say to you: Go chew a biscuit.

© 2007 Crimson Echo