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Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Category Archives: Existential Despair

Trolling For Misery

16 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by David in Existential Despair, History

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#News

It is a fundamental element of the “news” formula. Report the wars and riots, the political scandals and machinations, the celebrity sexual permutations (who did what to whom), the cute animal and/or baby story, and the disasters, natural or man made. The goal is to attract followers of the stories.

Who decides what is news? I love that bit of dialogue from A Christmas Story, where The Old Man (Darren McGavin) remarks on the “clodhopper in Griffith, Indiana who swallowed a yo-yo.” He declares, “That’s real news, not this politics slop!” I have agreed so many times,

We should think of news anchors as storytellers, like some bard in an ancient Mycaenean court, telling a story to satisfy the king. For me, the greatest of the modern news bards (storytellers) were Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

Murrow, reporting from London during The Blitz, was telling a story of epic, existential proportions. The British had to win. They were, in the Autumn of 1940, all that stood between survival and oblivion for Judaeo-Christian Civilization. That is not hyperbole.

Cronkite reported on the great human adventure of the Twentieth Century, the space program and the lunar landings. It was his signature story. The World has been searching for stories of epic dimensions ever since.

By necessity, we have to make stories melodramas, to attract and retain viewers or followers . Except the old formulas are no longer working. The ratings of the cable news channels are tanking. We don’t believe, or outright ignore, the contemporary bards. Each story demands a new sort of hook. If climate change fails to attract interest, find a new angle, a new champion. We’ve gone from Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio to Greta Thunberg, all in the course of a few short years. And if she fails, Pope Francis can stick his Argentinian schnozola into the story, as if anybody takes him seriously. The sex abuse and financisl malfeasance scandals in The Church have made him a symbolic castrato. Deal with those outrages, Holy Father, then circle back to deal with climate change.

So that’s enough. I am tired and satisfied with myself for presenting this post off the top of my head, as it were.

Night all. I love you.

Nap Again

24 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by David in Existential Despair

≈ 2 Comments

I took a nap. I did not go to Mass. Like there is a sad in me I don’t want Him to see. Maybe He can’t fix it. Or perhaps this is the mourning the experience of which He blessed Himself.

Still I did take that nap. And have that acorn squash cooking in the oven to go with our pot roast.

Two Hours Later

That acorn squash was the best. It sat on the table, near the fruit basket, waiting for me to “deal with it”, as if slicing this squash in half, dusting it with spices, and putting it in a 375° F(191°C) oven was some major deal. It wasn’t.

I cooked the eye round in the slow cooker for five and a half hours after searing it. I put some mushrooms in the pot, along with an onion, some garlic, bay leaf, rosemary, fennel seed and thyme, oh, and a shake or two of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. Well-received. And I had a pear for dessert, a Bartlett.

Later, I will slice strawberries and bananas for J’s lunch, with the last of last week’s chili.

The decaf coffee is ready.

Brassieres. H-Bombs

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by David in Civilization, Existential Despair, Fashion & Grooming

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#Brassieres #Nuclear War

I am watching Oksana and Julia consult with Russian women on brassieres. Brassieres. It is hard to believe that the United States, over nearly seventy-plus years, has been ready to wipe these people, or their parents or their grandparents, off the face of the Earth. It is also hard to believe that Russian government and its predecessors, was and is equally ready to destroy American brassiere shopping women, their children, their husbands and/or lovers, .

Don’t be so naïve to think that the politicians you support, would not authorize the launches that would destroy the world. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. They’re all killers, given the chance.

I’m wondering how a President will do in the opinion polling after a thermonuclear conflagration? Will the guy from Gallup or the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll knock on the door of your fallout shelter, seeking your opinion?

Would this thermonuclear exchange make you more likely, less likely, to vote for the President in the next election? Or will it have no effect, assuming you haven’t died before Election Day?

Letting It Out

31 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by David in Existential Despair

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#Sexual Desire

I have a deep agonising loneliness. My Catholic faith helps. It connects me to transcendent reality and larger truths.

But that it isn’t particularly good for hugs, kisses, slow fucks, or BJ’s. So I’m going crazy. I’m a master of channeling sexual energy elsewhere. But sometimes the channels get blocked.

After her brother’s funeral, I will open to J again and see what happens.

Sitting Here Resting My Bones

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by David in Existential Despair, Urban Brutalism

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#Otis Redding, #South Beach

It is one of these days where the iconic Otis Redding song Dock Of The Bay comes to mind. I’m feeling at loose ends, wasting time. I am a little tired, hungry, lonely and angry at the perpetual discord in our midst.

Loneliness has been addressed as Mrs CorC? has just returned. Hunger is up for resolution for we are going out to eat. Tired? I need to get up and move! That will come.

Anger? That is my choice. I can’t change the world. I can change my attitude and where I choose to place my focus.

Later This Evening

We went to dinner. I had a simple bowl of penne pasta with marinara sauce. We went home and about thirty minutes later, I went to the Y for my swim.

In between dinner and the Y, I found myself getting disturbed about something, new and improved ID’s which will be mandatory for boarding domestic airline flights. Oh well. Another reason not to fly.

I swam farther today than yesterday by about 450 meters, a total of 2500 meters. Oddly enough, the extra distance made a cold shower very comfortable and refreshing.

Now that I am home, I am watching a scene in South Beach in Miami Beach. The presence of a palm tree is the only exotic aspect of this camera view. Except for the palm trees, this could be anywhere. It reminds me of the street flanking the Inner Harbour in Baltimore, concrete street lights, pedestrians, and cars. Nothing special. Repeat. Nothing Special.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that the uniformity and mundane banality of America belies the hype presented constantly about just how “great” everything is. If you think this is a political rant, it ain’t. There is nothing that distinguishes this stark drudgery as anything more than a slice of Dull.

See what I mean.

The Nihilism Of Our Present Age

07 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by David in Existential Despair, Family, Politics

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#National Anthem # American Civil War # Donald Trump

Journalism has become little more than a head game. For both sides. One media commentator has just called the National Anthem “problematic” , thus changing the trajectory of the seemingly perpetual protest over the transgressions, real or imagined, of the ruling class to the words of Francis Scott Key’s poem itself. It’s the second verse, don’t you see? What? You don’t know it? You don’t care one whit about it? It doesn’t define you as an American? The idea is to give self-hatred a deeper cut, rubbing salt in the wounds.

Believe it or not, we still have a free exchange of ideas, and unrestricted breadth and depth of intellectual inquiry in this country. However, we often get the impression that one school of thought dominates the scholarship. The dominant paradigm in academic thought for about 100 years has been some permutation or another on the Class Struggle, e.g. workers vs capitalists,”have-nots” vs “haves”, Slaves vs Masters, oppressed vs oppressors.. The historiography of the American Civil War is a case in point. Any analysis that suggests abolition and/or perpetuation of slavery as merely one reason for the war is suspect. Dogma by the Marxist historians, admitted (as in the case of WEB Dubois) or de facto, has been promulgated. Dogma slides easily into myth. The search for truth is not the same as proclaiming a new popular mythology. Symbols of the old mythology thus become problematic; those attached to the old symbols are obviously not with the New Mythology, (insert Truth for Mythology).

What does this have to do with Nihilism? Nihilism is the devaluation and obliteration of all ideals, no matter how noble, such that nothing but a baseness of human motive and aspiration is left.

We come to live for gratification of appetite, sexual, sensual, gustatory. We have, as a culture, come to value feelings, particularly pleasurable ones, as the end of human pursuits. The adrenalin rush is the greatest aspiration in our culture. We seek it from sex, roller coasters, computer games, and tragically, war itself.

Saint Paul addressed this in one sentence, in describing the prevalent Roman culture of the First Century.

“Their God is the belly.”- Phillipians 3:19

The noble aspirations that distinguish the American character are largely devalued. I am speaking not merely of values expressed by Jefferson, Lincoln, Douglass, Anthony or King, but even more basic values, like fathers and mothers committed to the survival and integrity of their families. This isn’t only economic well-being, but the preservation of values that keep families and, by extension, societies, together. A father, in living the value that violence is wrong, makes a stronger point to his children than all the rhetoric of politicians on gun control. But where are fathers today? Where are families, for that matter?

So, in a world where there are no values, how can we even presume to Make America Great Again? The Trump revolution, you see, is bigger than its obviously flawed champion. Americans need to aspire to more. And that more, extends beyond the goals of both leftist nihilists and capitalist materialists.

Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend… Motivation?

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by David in Exercise/ Fitness, Existential Despair, Foreign Films, Uncategorized

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#Fassbinder, Film

That is today’s tune.  I am at an ebb.  Given that alcohol and drugs are a suicide run for me and sexual infidelity is not my style either, my two principal diversions are exercise and eating. Add the beginnings of a cold to the mix. So exercise is a complete turn-off. That leaves eating. Or maybe, I will blog.

Yeah, I’ll blog. And drink coffee.  The coffee tastes good. The chair is comfy. I will go back to Rainer Werner Fassbender’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, starring some great German actors, like Günter Lamprecht, Hannah Schygulla, Gottfried John, and Barbara Sukowa. This was a miniseries on German Television (Deutsche Fernsehen. sounds classier, doesn’t it?) but it was released in theatres in the USA.  Fassbinder was a bad boy’s bad boy, i.e. a homosexual drug addict and rather indiscrete about his proclivities. He never got much of a following beyond the art house crowd, here in the America of Ronald Reagan and the 1980’s. 

The story follows the life of a petty thief, Franz Bieberkopf (Lamprecht), who served time for the murder of his lover. It begins with his release from prison for this crime.  There isn’t a lot of moralizing but there is some fantastic cinematic storytelling. 

I have to bear in mind that stories are meant to be experienced in the mind in some fashion. I need not have written a thesis on Fassbinder in order to enjoy this. And I don’t need to mythologize about his angst as a gay artist either.  He wanted me to enjoy this story, I’ll betcha.

So I will blog and watch. And not obsess too much about food. Maybe I will do some ironing and shoe shining, and sublimate my service bottom energy into something productive.

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