photo by S. Dogimont

Sometimes I walk the beach at night with a bottle of whiskey staring up at me from my clenched fist and I wonder, what does humanity need in order for us to get our priorities straight?
The other night a solution came to me. But allow me to take a hearty pull of the Cragganmore (aged 12 years) and offer you but one, maybe two, examples of what I see as life out of balance first:
An unscrupulous photographer makes $80,000 for snapping a photo of an unsuspecting, mediocre actor who earns (incorrect use of the word) $10,000,000 starring in an intelligence-insulting film which makes a studio $200,000,000 that tens of millions of us have dished out for.
Yet entire nations remain impoverished.

On the way home from this shitty movie Steve will text Mandy, while he’s driving, letting her know he wants to do her again, real bad. She texts back saying she’s willing as long as he agrees to choke her while he does, cuz, you know, that’s the only way she can get off. He starts to text back, swerves to miss someone’s granny crossing the street, swears at her, resumes texting, agrees to the choking but only if he can slip away from his wife, who he loathes and only married because he figured he was in love (for real) but discovered, after a few months, that he mistook lust for love, and anyway it’s too late because he’s always been a bit of a coward. Steve parks his car, passes a homeless man that he sees everyday and ignores everyday, walks into his loveless marriage, lies about forgetting important documents at work, leaves, goes to Mandy, chokes her, fucks her, cums on her face (which she pretends to like), drives home, announces he’s exhausted, falls asleep, wakes up six hours later, goes to a job that requires little skill, minimum effort and no passion, but makes him a six figure sum which he keeps in a bank run by robbers who occasionally get caught and serve more time than men who are convicted rapists.

Ah, the whiskey feels good coursing through my blood. . .

How about the economy?
The ground beneath our current economic structure seems more like an ice road that spans an arctic body of water, and we’re driving our semi over it during spring thaw, hoping really hard it won’t collapse beneath us. Again.
The thought frightens me. I consider taking a long walk into the ocean but opt for some more whiskey instead. I bring the bottle to my eager lips and think, how about a sprinkle of good old fashioned communism mixed in with our bloated, over-extended capitalism? Wouldn’t that even-out the greed a little?
I take a large pull, wince, wait for the burn to recede and conclude, Americans would never go for that. You say the word socialism in their presence and it’s as though you’ve just offered them the chance to contract an extremely painful venereal disease that unfortunately displays itself as an outbreak of hideous pustules on the face.
Go ahead, try it. You’ll never see faces pucker so tightly over the mere utterance of a word.

And population?
Aren’t there just too many of us on our fragile planet now?
What if we enacted some mode of sufferable population control? Like sending people to colonize the moon. Australians (whom I like) were already sent to Australia, which, in the entire middle of the continent approximates the moon’s landscape anyway. Perhaps they’d volunteer?
Or how about birthing licenses?
Surely if we stopped morally ill-equipped folks from spawning replicas of themselves, we’d have less con artists in the world bilking people of their billions, which I’m sure, were honourably earned in the first place.

But then it hits me, just as the last of the whiskey pours into my belly. The ice highway melting away is EXACTLY what we need! Forget this little world “recession” we’ve just gone through.
Bring on the final collapse!
The smell of impotent cash burning in oil drums will at least mean people are staying warm, and the sound of proletariat folks tilling their rooftop gardens will be the sound of salads. Salads for one and all!
A long overdue apocalypse, people. That’s my solution.

photo by S.D.

I know it’s a bit harsh but listen, if nothing else an apocalypse can at least be life-affirming. And you can’t deny it, there’s nothing quite like the end of the world as we know it to really level the playing field.
Then we’ll see how far a career in video game design gets you.
You used to be an NHL star? Back of the line buddy.
You’re a potato farmer? Step right up ma’am.
Stock broker? Sucks to be you.
Brew master? Here, take my left nut.

So don’t rule it out just because you might be afraid of it’s aftermath. Think of it as a chance to reconnect with the slightly more important things in life other than say, Pippa Middleton and her ass, or Charlie Sheen and every single fucking thing about him, or how it pains you to not be able to find 300-count Egyptian cotton sheets to buy in your neighbourhood.

In the mean time, while we wait for the end times, take a look at the following sites for some more practical solutions:

1. 15 Ways To Fix The World

2. Humanitarian News

3. Mobile Movement

4. Up With Hope

5. FINCA

6. TED

7. Degrowth

8. Saul Griffith

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Stranger Than Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.