“We live in an era where our cities are armed with steel and concrete. Computers and electronics barricade our mind. It doesn't change the fact that there exists a lot of strange phenomena, bizarre beyond reason or logic. Most folks just don't see them. That's because we cling to order, to any tiny happiness that comes our way, and we bust our humps to blind ourselves with our desires and our pleasures. There's a world of darkness out there, beyond time or space. A world filled with evil that is undeniably real. And in that world, there are things that run wild”
- Wicked City (1987)
Well fam, we made it another revolution of the wheel of the year. Corona-chan still hasn’t killed us, and WWIII has stayed on simmer, despite every attempt by our ‘betters’ to escalate things and the wag the dog into a full on red-star, white-star hoedown and shindig, just like mimaw used to make. The petrodollar based Breton-Woods II system continues to teeter-totter and see-saw, but somehow stays up, and China continues to pull petals from the largest flower ever in a seemingly never ending game of ‘I will invade him’ and ‘I will invade him not.’ Turkey continues to deftly play Washington against Moscow and profit from ‘strategic uncertainty’ while France and Germany fail to play the same game, getting dragged by ear by Uncle Sam into severing ties with the Eurasian block over the Ukraine mess.
But worry not frens. It will get worse before it gets any better. It is times like these that we should all remember Heinlein’s ‘Crazy Time’ as documented in ‘The Year of the Jackpot’.
"Very well. Now, Meade, we seemed to have located the point of contagion in your case, Mrs. Copley. What I'd like to know next is how you felt, what you were thinking about, when you did it?
She was frowning intently. "Wait a minute, Potiphar do I understand that nine other girls have pulled the stunt I pulled?
"Oh, no nine others today. You are" He paused briefly "the three hundred and nineteenth case in Los Angeles county since the first of the year. I don't have figures on the rest of the country, but the suggestion to clamp down on the stories came from the eastern news services when the papers here put our first cases on the wire. That proves that it's a problem elsewhere, too.
"You mean that women all over the country are peeling off their clothes in public? Why, how shocking!
He said nothing. She blushed again and insisted, "Well, it is shocking, even if it was me, this time.
"No, Meade. One case is shocking; over three hundred makes it scientifically interesting. That's why I want to know how it felt. Tell me about it.
"But All right, I'll try. I told you I don't know why I did it; I still don't. I-
"You remember it?
"Oh, yes I remember getting up off the bench and pulling up my sweater. I remember unzipping my skirt. I remember thinking I would have to hurry as I could see my bus stopped two blocks down the street. I remember how good it felt when I finally, uh" She paused and looked puzzled. "But I still don't know why.
"What were you thinking about just before you stood up?
"I don't remember.
"Visualize the street. What was passing by? Where were your hands? Were your legs crossed or uncrossed? Was there anybody near you? What were you thinking about?
"Uh . . . nobody was on the bench with me. I had my hands in my lap. Those characters in the mixed-up clothes were standing near by, but I wasn't paying attention. I wasn't thinking much except that my feet hurt and I wanted to get home and how unbearably hot and sultry it was Then" Her eyes became distant, "suddenly I knew what I had to do and it was very urgent that I do it. So I stood up and I . . . and I" Her voice became shrill
"Take it easy!" he said. "Don't do it again.
"Huh? Why, Mr. Breen, I wouldn't do anything like that.
"Of course not. Then what?
"Why, you put your raincoat around me and you know the rest." She faced him. "Say, Potiphar, what were you doing with a raincoat? It hasn't rained in weeks this is the driest, hottest rainy season in years.
"In sixty-eight years, to be exact.
"Huh?
"I carry a raincoat anyhow. Uh, just a notion of mine, but I feel that when it does rain, it's going to rain awfully hard. He added, "Forty days and forty nights, maybe.
She decided that he was being humorous and laughed.
He went on, "Can you remember how you got the idea?
She swirled her glass and thought. "I simply don't know.
He nodded. "That's what I expected.
"I don't understand you unless you think I'm crazy. Do you?
"No. I think you had to do it and could not help it and don't know why and can't know why.
"But you know." She said it accusingly
"Maybe. At least I have some figures. Ever take any interest in statistics, Meade?
She shook her head. "Figures confuse me. Never mind statistics. I want to know why I did what I did!
He looked at her very soberly. "I think we're lemmings, Meade.
She looked puzzled, then horrified. "You mean those little furry mouse like creatures? The ones that
"Yes. The ones that periodically make a death migration, until millions, hundreds of millions of them drown them selves in the sea. Ask a lemming why he does it. If you could get him to slow up his rush toward death, even money says he would rationalize his answer as well as any college graduate. But he does it because he has to and so do we.
"That's a horrid idea, Potiphar.
"Maybe. Come here, Meade. I'll show you figures that confuse me, too."
He went to his desk and opened a drawer, took out a packet of cards. "Here's one. Two weeks ago a man sues an entire state legislature for alienation of his wife's affection and the judge lets the suit be tried. Or this one a patent application for a device to lay the globe over on its side and warm up the arctic regions. Patent denied, but the inventor took in over three hundred thousand dollars in down payments on South Pole real estate before the postal authorities stepped in. Now he's fighting the case and it looks as if he might win. And here prominent bishop proposes applied courses in the so-called facts of life in high schools." He put the card away hastily. "Here's a dilly: a bill introduced in the Alabama lower house to repeal the laws of atomic energy, not the present statutes, but the natural laws concerning nuclear physics; the wording makes that plain." He shrugged. "How silly can you get?
"They're crazy.
"No, Meade. One such is crazy; a lot of them is a lemming death march. No, don't object I've plotted them on a curve. The last time we had anything like this was the so-called Era of Wonderful Nonsense. But this one is much worse. He delved into a lower drawer, hauled out a graph. "The amplitude is more than twice as great and we haven't reached peak. What the peak will be I don't dare guess, three separate rhythms, reinforcing.
She peered at the curves. "You mean that the laddy with the artic real estate deal is somewhere on this line?
"He adds to it. And back here on the last crest are the flag pole sitters and the goldfish swallowers and the Ponzi hoax and the marathon dancers and the man who pushed a pea nut up Pikes Peak with his nose. You're on the new crest or you will be when I add you in.
She made a face. "I don't like it.
"Neither do I. But it's as clear as a bank statement. This year the human race is letting down its hair, flipping its lip with a finger, and saying, 'Wubba, wubba, wubba."
As to why this might be so, I would point my dear readers to consider the mouse utopia experiments of Dr. John Bumpass Calhoun and compare and contrast with Agent Smith’s monologue in the first (and only) Matrix, and then finally, cross reference with Calon Mautholos’s monologue from Appleseed (1988).
We are spiritually sick, because our environment is wrong. We live in the greatest Machine ever built, but the Machine is slowly strangling us. The Machine offers us utopian comforts, but only actually delivers slow degradation, pollution, degeneration, mutation, and death. And even if we could perfect the machine, remove the, what is that cute technocratic euphemism? Ah yes, even if we could remove and ameliorate the system’s ‘negative externalities’, keeping only the utopian dream of never ending bliss, well a wise man once said that this too would only make us sick.
But what would greatness look like? Are we even capable of recognising it anymore?
And that, Dear Readers, is why, I hesitatingly, cringingly, full of self-loathing for ill formed words and dreary sentences, dare to press keys and, but poorly, write. To attempt to show what greatness might look like, resemble only by way of poor analogy, as seen in a mirror but darkly. And so my goals for the coming tour of duty in this Vale of Tears is to finish my assigned re-writes from my editor and get the novella out the door, and complete my first novel. And try not to be too disgusted with my work.
I bid thee, Men of the West, if ye will be great, then love strength and beauty, and hate weakness and ugliness. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Ride well, shoot straight, and tell the truth. Pick up your cross, which is also a sword, and your own death.
Become the Barbarians inside the Machine.
Regress Harder!
