It has been an extremely trying month, both days of it; a mensis horriblus in layman's terms. Everything is all mixed up. We are heading to hand in a hellbasket I tell you. Something must be done about something.
Thank the Founding Fathers for this well-deserved long July 4th weekend to help us forget about the trials and tribulations being trumpeted from the webtops. There's still that annoying oil spill in the Gulf that refuses to pause even as I put pencil to paper. And more troubling, last week's Supreme Court decision that allows every man, woman, and fetus the right to own a handgun upon conception. (In an apparent oversight, stem cells were left out of the ruling.) Couple that with last month's passage of a short-sighted and discriminatory illegal immigrant bill in Arizona, drug cartel murders along the Mexican border, Lindsay Lohan's imminent arrest on probation violations and a hurricane that nearly missed slamming into the Texas coast yesterday. The Haitains never had it so hard.
Here I sit with only 39 minutes left before logging off my computer and leaving work for a three-day bender. As an American, I have the distinct privilege of carrying on with a relatively care-free existence while occasionally pondering how to solve world hunger armed with just my iPhone, car keys, a paper-clip and a sense for what the modern man wears in a beachside resort after 8pm.
The advent of the 24 hour news cycle has exposed us to strife throughout the globe, condensed and captured within the confines of a 15” LCD screen. The world is at once smaller yet more treacherous. The charwoman in Leeds may as well be cleaning the house across the street for all we know, so much have our boundaries been erased. When I was a kid, all you had to do was buy the world a Coke, and smiling hippies in pre-Stella McCartney era peasant-skirts would be grasping hands swaying from the hilltops. The halcyon days are indeed in danger of extinction, so here are my ten recommendations to help start us on the path to singing in perfect harmony:
1) The BP “environmental catastrophe” in the gulf needs to be resolved. Plugging the oil well will only be the start in a decades-long cleanup. But it will be the end of the beginning at least. (Contrary to popular belief, BP does not now nor will it ever stand for "bitch, please.")
2) Apple needs to embrace Adobe Flash. Period. Why can't we all just get along?.
3) Congress must end Don't Ask Don't Tell immediately. Much like desegregating the troops in the 50's, gays in the military should be addressed as a civil rights issue, and it is.
4) Immigration reform must occur this year. We cannot deport 11 million people and conversely, we cannot sustain the current untenable path to citizenship. Si se puede.
5) Lady Gaga must perish from the earth, forever and ever, amen.
6) Replace high fructose corn syrup with sugar. In everything. In moderation.
7) People should be required to read at least one book a month, a paper one with pages that can be turned manually.
8) Watch more Wheel of Fortune and less Housewives of New Jersey.
9) Gays should gain the right to get married, in the eyes of the law and the Crate & Barrel gift registry.
10) And finally: End the wars. Iran, Afghanistan. Iron Chef.
With the two minutes I have left, I'd like to buy more time, Pat.
Friday, July 2, 2010
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