The Waking Beast

It was in the middle of rush hour traffic in Los Angeles today that I had an insight. I saw a guy signal in the right lane and I saw a guy in the left lane slow down to let the other guy in. I was floored. Discombobulated. I had to pull over. I checked the GPS in my car and there was no mistake, I was still in Los Angeles. I hadn't mysteriously been transported to another world. Canada, maybe. I couldn't for the life of me understand it.

Then it hit me. We must be at world's end. I quickly rushed home and turned on the news. My suspicions were confirmed. There was no doubt in my mind. Think about it. Times have always been turbulent, I admit, but I feel that we are in the eye of our historical storm. For starters, there is a woman vying for the presidency of America opposite a black man, both with a serious shot at the job! Now this is conceivable, possible, even probable if we lived in, say, France or Switzerland or even Pakistan. But America? There has to be a mistake.

I flipped the channels. There's a tragic enormous quake that just rocked China and is killing thousands of people. This only days after a cyclone named after a flower wreaks devastation on Myanmar.

There's a beautiful lightning storm, bolts dancing, over an erupting volcano in Chile. The last time that monster woke was thousands of years ago.

There's a guy in Texas who has a harem of fourteen-year-old wives and another guy in Europe who fathers seven of his own grandchildren. The governor of Minnesota isn't getting any loving at home and Arnold isn't doing all that bad in California (even though we all know who would have been better).

The drug addict Robert Downey nailed it in Ironman and the mortgage industry has almost singlehandedly destroyed the world. I say "almost" because there were actually two hands at play, and our glorious leader was the other.

Britney Spears is giving parenting advice to her younger 16-year-old pregnant sister and an ex-Nazi is the pope. I went to fill up on gas and fifty dollars barely got me half a tank.

I'm taking a wider look. Forest for the trees. And I don't know what to make of our forest.

Comments

[OtayPanky]

I'm no Catholic, but Pope Benedict was never a Nazi. That's a scurrilous thing to say, and you should retract it.

Kurt Waldheim, on the other hand, WAS a Nazi...a member of the SS.

[Cathexis]

You forgot "Republicans running on a platform of Change ... while asserting that the past 8 years have been great for the country!"

[wolfgangmo]

Forest? Tree?

You MUST be thinking of Canada.

[NJOsprey]

No, no no! Iraqis are our friends. Iran is trying to invade us. And we have always been at war with EastAsia.

[hopeless277]

Uh, sorry, we had to cut down the forest to make weapons to fight off the Iraqis trying to invade our country.