The Bliss of the Curmudgeon...

...or, Please Put A Bullet Through Your Happy Face.

Okay, so I'm not really all that sour a sourpuss, nor am I always followed about by a dark cloud; I do, however, seem to have ever-shorter patience for people who always present an "upbeat" appearance, those for whom there are no rainy days, folks who always seem to have sugar and ice cubes at the ready to make lemonade from the truckloads of lemons dumped on them every day.

I find nothing particularly wrong with such expressions of a "positive attitude" (gah - there goes the creepy-gooseflesh again), but what galls sometimes is the propensity of many such Dr. Feelgoods for on-the-spot analyses of persons who don't reflect their own sunny outlooks - namely, me.

Loosely put, I have no framework familiar to such armchair Freudians with which to conduct such a dialogue; I'm as far removed from popular culture as I can make myself, and therefore have few shared experiences by which to be gauged.

My language is even different; I find myself constantly on the periphery of discussions, puzzled, and then suffer various queries from participants who are almost always veritably dumbfounded that I have no idea what they're talking about, be it sports, "American Idol," whatever.

Sorry folks - that world is pretty much foreign to me, of some mild amusement at times, and almost certainly a curiousity I'm mostly happy to let go by.

I'm Tired

...of a political system that survives by convincing the people it's supposed to be of, by, and for that there's really nothing for them to be concerned about, that as long as they simply trust their government all is well; that their government does everything it can to protect them and that they should be satisfied that everything it does is aboveboard and morally proper; that anyone who questions how and why the government does what it does is at best naive and misguided and at worst seriously in need of correction; that, because we are the United States of America, the entire world owes us whatever we want to take from them.

We are victims of a sick, twisted confidence game, foisted upon us by people with money and power - and too many of us are simply unaware that the tables are rigged, the cards marked, and the dice loaded; we are having our soul, as a Nation, sucked from us by the most nefarious of vampires...and a lot of us don't even care.

Separated at Birth?

Max Headroom...


...and (the late) Tony Snow.


You decide...