Life As Performance Art 106

It might be time again to disconnect entirely from the news. On the radio news broadcasts every day they play the voice of the Dump in the White House. That's right. THAT Dump! I am so sick of this, and so sick of getting nowhere when I phone in my complaints, often swearing at those overpaid bastards at the cBC that maybe it is just time to disconnect altogether. Just play classical music CD's, read newspapers occasionally, look at the odd website. Otherwise, madness. The people at the CBC are complete absolute idiots when it comes to news broadcasting. They will play the same garbage, no matter how upsetting or puerile, over and over again, and they seem to have some kind of sick kinky fetish about the Dump. I think that it's because of those idiots that a lot of folks are disconnecting. But they don't care. This is public radio. They get paid whopping salaries for their crappy work and they don't have to worry about their ratings. They can do whatever they want. They are the CBBC, the Canadian Bullshit Corporation and they are omnipotent! Absolute zero public accountability. I will still listen to a few programs, but I am done with the news. It is too upsetting, too angering, and they just don't even care. Not to mention that, the negative, fearmongering and melodramatic dreck that passees as daily news is not the only news that is relevant. They somehow seem to almost always lose and miss out on the beauty that is also going on right now in the world. In the lives of people who don't seem to exist to them. All the acts of random kindness that occur. The beauty of a sunset or a sunrise. The lovely green foliage around us. The wildlife. The disappearing songbirds. Yes, of course these things are also in peril, and we need to be reminded, but we also need to know that there is hope and that we will somehow get through this. Still, we have those idiots who occupy positions of obscene wealth and influence and power who seem intent on destroying (mining and petroleum CEOs and executives) everything that is good and beautiful, just to satisfy their greed for profit. But they also are going to die and once they are in the grave, who knows what the next generation will bring. There appears to be a growing contingent of youth who want to clean up this mess that we and the previous generations have been leaving behind, and who are passionate and determined to build something new, better, more sustainable, more equitable, and more just. I have always, despite my age now, been part of that contingent. I was thinking and saying the things that Millennials are now thinking and saying, forty years ago when I was in my early twenties. I have never, not once reneged on my values. I still don't drive a car and I don't eat meat, live very simply, and I reduce, reuse and recycle. Now I am gratified to think that others are finally starting to catch up. I just hope it isn't too late. Right now everyone's focussed on the moon, since it is the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing. I was thirteen years old, home alone and watching it all on TV. I thought, what a waste of time. It's too nice a day to waste on something like this. But I also realised, with some dismay and disappointment, that I was already jaded. I didn't care. "Is that all there is," I sang, thinking of Peggy Lee's recent hit recording. "If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing. Let's break out the booze, and have a ball. If that's all...there is." One would think, kid, you're just thirteen, too young to be cynical. Well, I was already a survivor of sexual and physical abuse, schoolyard bullying, and was then weathering my parents' difficult and bitter divorce. I had already earned the right to be jaded and cynical. Well, now they are all mooning over the moon again, and my take isn't much different from fifty years ago. We are a noxious and toxic species. We have already destroyed our own planet, and now we presume to wreak havoc on other worlds? We have to give up these stupid dreams, we're creatures of Earth and we are not biologically equipped for space or other planets, and neither are any planets that sustain life going to be equipped for us. We will overrun them like feral rabbits, pigeons, rats and starlings, or they will eat us up. We have to clean up the mess we have already made here on our own planet and of our own planet Earth, and in the meantime clean ourselves up. As for the moon, if they really want to put someone there, on the Moon, then how about starting with President Dump? And his obnoxious kids. And the extreme right of the Republican Party, and the entire Communist Part of China, the fat little dictator of North Korea, Victor Maduro, Andrew Scheer, the sitting squealing pig premiers of Alberta and Ontario, the entire BC Liberal Party, and a few others. Give them a one trip to the moon and leave them there, WBO (Without Benefit of Oxygen)