{"id":310,"date":"2009-02-19T10:18:27","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T15:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=310"},"modified":"2018-10-31T08:56:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T12:56:37","slug":"big-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=310","title":{"rendered":"Big Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, still coming down from all of the nail-biting freakout that circles around the production of a book<\/a>.\u00a0 Now sitting around, powerless, still nail-biting, waiting for inventory to arrive at the distribution center.\u00a0 I remain convinced that something will fuck up, because\u2026well, everything always fucks up.
\n<\/p>\n

I have this attitude because I\u2019m not drinking enough.\u00a0 That\u2019s thanks to overwork.\u00a0 As many freelance writing and editing gigs I can pick up in light of the somewhat shaky ground my day job appears to be on, and the threat that the weekend job may dry up.\u00a0 So I\u2019m going to horde money in an attempt to weather the summer, which might find me unemployed and contemplating a move to West Virginia, where my moonshine-addled family will welcome me with smothering arms.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s worst case.\u00a0 Moving to the Ohio Valley area is not the best way to cheer up.\u00a0 It is the best way to nurture dreams of owning a beefy pick-up and driving it in circles through town every weekend night while getting steadily drunk on MGD.\u00a0 It is also the best way to pick up a church-going, overweight girlfriend who gets pregnant when you exchange any fluids, even if it\u2019s a shared Slurpee.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I can work at Arby\u2019s and get a trailer just outside of town and live in motherfucking hell and maybe that\u2019ll teach me to appreciate all the good things I\u2019ve passed by in the last 34 years.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I\u2019m expecting everything to be fine.\u00a0 Because the country\u2019s going to recover and my steady places of employment will be fine.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 They\u2019re \u201crolling back\u201d our raises at my day job, which is better than unemployment.\u00a0 But the day job is becoming a source of stress.\u00a0 I feel somewhat like I\u2019m in some sort of combat situation.\u00a0 I\u2019m under constant threat of being ripped apart by a sniper, my leaders are all desk-jockeys who can\u2019t piss straight and are wearing blinders, the mission objectives are blurred, and I spend 90% of my day utterly bored, with nothing but busy work, waiting for shit to explode.<\/p>\n

We received the \u201craise rollback\u201d email last week, and the important people who work 4 hours a week are meeting as you read this to decide if it\u2019s the way to go.\u00a0 If this were the private sector, and not some egg-sucking liberal pussy NPO, they\u2019d lay off about a quarter of the staff (and I can provide a list, if they want) and clear the decks of what is an alarming number of useless, shitcan, Hulu-watching, compulsive texting, moaning little bitches.<\/p>\n

Because I\u2019ve had private sector jobs, I live in a constant, irrational state of fear.\u00a0 I see myself coming into work and being fired without severance before I\u2019ve turned on my computer\u2026then being asked to stay till five to finish up whatever outstanding work I have.<\/p>\n

Of course, that won\u2019t happen.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t shake the dread.<\/p>\n

I was thinking the other day about Thompson\u2019s \u201cBig Darkness\u201d article<\/a>.\u00a0 The Bush re-election feels like a different era after only one month of Obama Saturation (or, rather, a few years of Obama Saturation), but Thompson\u2019s conclusion sure hits home.\u00a0 Those last three paragraphs.\u00a0 My grandfather told me the other day that Thompson\u2019s Big Darkness was here now.\u00a0 But my grandfather isn\u2019t what we would call an optimist.\u00a0 He\u2019s doubted the world at large since he built a sandbagged machine gun nest on the roof of the family\u2019s Silver Spring home during the riots following MLK\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n

Of course, we laugh at him today, but those 68 riots in DC were something.\u00a0 The rubble and ruined buildings, in some neighborhoods, stuck around till the 90\u2019s, East Germany style, before gentrification finally cleaned them up and turned them into Target stores, Starbucks, and condos for white people.\u00a0 The plan for DC\u2019s blacks may well have been put in place in 68:\u00a0 Do not repair the riot damage until you can figure out how to develop a palatable genocide plan or simply deport the blacks to reservations.<\/p>\n

But I harp too much on that topic, so I\u2019ll just stick with mocking my grandfather who, queerly, voted for Obama and has been a lifelong Democrat, except for the Nixon and Reagan landslides where nobody was a Democrat.\u00a0 But he\u2019s that Old Left, FDR-style Democrat who hates blacks, hippies, women, and wishes he had a machine gun whenever he sees Neo-Cons. Something we need in our young Democrats today.\u00a0 If we were a bit more organized, eager to go to war and shoot Japs in the face and collect their ears, swilling cocktails in darkened basements, and turning into gun-crazed maniacs when confronting ultra-conservatism, things would be different.<\/p>\n

The Old Left is actually kind of scary.\u00a0 The New Left tried to be scary, but it all fell apart.\u00a0 They betrayed us and surrendered to the mythical \u201cSilent Majority.\u201d\u00a0 And now you read about groups like the Weathermen \u2013 mad bombers, really \u2013 who are walking around talking about their yachts and houses and expressing regret that they ever spoke up and tried to change things.\u00a0 Most of the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s liberals have fallen into that mold.\u00a0 Blacks have given up fighting, the hippies are dead, the activist groups have all aged into greedy conservatives, our parents told us not to stand out from the crowd, and we were given decades of luxury.\u00a0 Now our rebellious types wait until they get a permit before they march, and stay within the neat lines laid out by the police, and obey the rules, and shuffle home in time for fruit juice and rice cakes.\u00a0 Then they sit in their expensive condos and houses, surrounded by all the comfort items and toys they desire, and preach from their cushy armchairs.<\/p>\n

But I harp on the American Liberal far too much, as well.\u00a0 What I should focus on is the simple stuff\u2026 Like my crippling nostalgia for Sid and Marty Krofft.\u00a0 I\u2019ll leave you with that, and a link to a thread full of Youtube shit from my youth<\/a>.\u00a0 Electra-wow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, still coming down from all of the nail-biting freakout that circles around the production of a book.\u00a0 Now sitting around, powerless, still nail-biting, waiting for inventory to arrive at the distribution center.\u00a0 I remain convinced that something will fuck …<\/p>\n

Big Darkness<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[174,140,173,399,127],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-big-darkness","tag-hst","tag-obama","tag-dc","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":955,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}