Diary of a Mad Man

Spring Break is coming.  Well. . . maybe not for most of you.  I don't think I have a lot of college kids reading this, not because it isn't good but because I don't think they are reading much of anything at all.  Actually, I just looked it up.  Now I can say it is not my opinion but a matter of fact.  They are barely reading at all.  

So there's that.  

What I meant, however, is that most of you will not have Spring Break.  Is that right?  Or does your employer give you a week off, too?  

Mine did.  I have had Spring Break my entire life.  The Factory closed down for a week every March and we would be like "Factory Workers Gone Wild."  You don't want to see that video.  

Actually, originally it was Easter Break, but you know, times being what they are. . . .  But go back and watch Connie Francis in "Where the Boys Are."  No, don't.  I'm just saying.  But if you do, you will notice the influence of Hunter S. Thompson on behavior.  It's all Fear and Loathing now.  Bad things happen during Spring Break, the worse the better.  No one wants to be the center of a boring life.  After Thompson, to be boring was a sin.  I'm not saying kids read Thompson.  Again, they don't read by and large.  But there are movies and there is YouTube and so everybody knows how to party like a savage beast.  

It ain't MTV anymore, either.  We've moved WAY beyond your parents' party now.  

Again, I have ALWAYS had Spring Break, but I have never "partied."  I have always spent my time away from The Throng.  

It is difficult to avoid The Throng now.  They seem to be EVERYWHERE.  

I looked back at the blog yesterday.  One year.  I wanted to see what I was doing last year at this time.  See?  The blog is a useful tool.  So. . . what I was doing was The Gardening.  I'm a bit behind last year's schedule.  A year ago yesterday, I went to the big nursery on the outskirts of town and bought plants and mulch for my mother's garden and for mine.  I had already tilled the soil.  So. . . I have decided to begin that process today.  

PARTY!

The thing I woke up realizing this morning is that I don't want to.  There is a lot that I don't want to do.  But I have to.  I just need to put in a few backbreaking, hand blistering days.  I should look forward to it, but in a fallen world of global warming, terrible fires and horrible storms where rainwater contains microplastics and disease carrying mosquitoes swarm the land. . . I'd rather go get fucked up with the illiterate crowd, stay up late, have unprotected sex, and watch TikTok videos on my phone.  

It's hard to blame the kids, right?  Well, no. . . it is really quite easy.  It just may not be justified.  

It will all begin with the Turning of the Clock on Sunday.  Daylight Savings Time.  Let's just fuck everyone up again.  Nobody wants it.  Nobody looks forward to falling back or springing ahead.  Maybe one, but not both.  "Quit fucking with the time," people say, but somehow the tyranny continues.  It is as unbelievable as re-running the 2020 election all over again.  It's like being trapped in a dystopian Terry Gilliam film.  It is like listening to the theme song "Brazil" 24 hours a day.  

No, you can't blame the kids.  

And these are just the minor American horrors.  We have it made.  Try Spring Break in China, Africa, India, or the Middle East.  Malaysia.  Haiti.  

Yea. . . we are plagued with micro-concerns.  I'm not saying Global Warming is a micro-concern.  Nor plastic.  Those are universal tyrannies.  But they are not enough for us, apparently, so we make more.  I don't think people truly want to be happy.  Rather, I don't think they want anyone else to be.  We don't want anyone having more fun than we personally are.  

And yet. . . social media.  Yea. . . there's the good life.  

Yesterday, I thought my accounts had been hacked.  I couldn't log into things.  I spent the entire morning in a panic, checking banking and investment accounts to see if I had been robbed.  Then I went about changing all my passwords.  It is difficult to change a password when you think someone else has already changed it.  Now I have a bunch of passwords that I don't know, that are remembered by Safari and Google and god knows how many other entities.  Here's an example: 

XPgr245q!Zzqu@5mMmzz3.  

Something like that.  That's a good one, they say.  Now I'm simply dependent on the corporations filling in my passwords for me.  Terrific.  

I found out this morning that it was all unnecessary, that there was an internet glitch plaguing the land.  But I think yesterday had a profound effect on me.  I'm not sure how much banking and payment stuff I am going to do online now.  I may go back to a cash based life.  

Probably not.  

But last night I couldn't turn on the television.  I did, but I turned it off.  I've become like the kids.  I don't read enough anymore.  So last night for a few hours, I read.  I put on some jazz turned low and chilled.  After reading awhile, I got on the floor and stretched.  Nothing formal, just things that felt like they needed stretching.  Reading and stretching to jazz felt really good.  When did I quit doing that?  During the Golden Age of Television?  Well that is over now, ruined by the big Corporate Entities.  Where there were two streaming platforms there are now thirty.  And the content has become the stuff of public taste.  

And so I am giving up television the way I have given up the news.  

Probably not.  

But maybe.  

I got shit from some people for the photo at the top of the page.  

"She's look back wondering who the creeper is."

What the fuck?  But I get it.  Photography, other than selfies, is pretty much a crime.  It is invasive and exploitive.  Thank goodness we will be able to create such images with AI soon.  That will be controversial, too.  However. . .

I was standing and waiting to take a photo of the colorful lifeguard shack.  You know. . . IG style shit without the selfie.  This family (there is a kid somewhere), however, were pretty much owning the space.  I smiled and stood and then held up my camera and they smiled and didn't mind me taking photos of them taking photos and hogging the shack.  They were there for-EVER.  I don't think they spoke English.  But it was all O.K.  I like these more than I would have liked the guard shack alone.  

I don't like the new zeitgeist.  But whatever.  Life is full of tyrannies we just have to accept or go mad.  We are not brave Navalnys.  We've seen what happens to "his kind."  No, even a strong letter to the editor is sent with a pseudonym now.  There is no use garnering the attention of the authorities, one of the three versions of The Chinese Curse.  

See?  A year from now, when I look back to see what I was doing, I can say, "What the fuck?!"   

Diary of a Mad Man.  

Oh. . . and enjoy Spring Break.  

P-A-R-T-Y!