the new new america

i'm trying to concentrate. really i am. i'm trying hard to accomplish this farce that is loosely termed "my job." but my mind is just...it's satisfying its own wanderlust. i wonder if perhaps it's the weather; these hazy gray days always tend to make me more introspective. difficult to tell. but i'm thinking fuzzy thoughts, i'm thinking through jell-o, i'm thinking through cotton wool. i'm thinking about how things change, and how people change, and how it upsets me that there are those whose company i just don't enjoy so much any more. and there are those who don't enjoy *my* company so much any more. tit for tat. cosmic balance, i suppose. i'm thinking about last year and last summer, and why it is that everything just seems so much worse than it did this time last year. it's like we've lost our last scraps of hope. like we've resigned ourselves to this, to being poor and stressed out, to hating our jobs, to hating everything. and, for the first time, genuinely believing that it's never going to change. i suppose that's the fundamental difference between this time this year and this time last year. last year, it really seemed possible that things could turn around. that the economy could come back, that we could get new jobs, that we weren't stuck here, in this rut, for life. now, one sad, sick stock market, one war, 70,000 layoffs and a major medical epidemic later, i think that the fight has been largely knocked out of us.

and i'm sorry i can't help you. and i'm sorry if occasionally i want to talk about more than how much we hate our jobs. i'm sorry i can't help you. want me to say it again? i'm sorry. i can't even help myself. i can't even smoke a fucking cigarette in public, much less be of any use.

welcome to the new new america. land of the tired, the poor, the scared, the lonely and the smoke free. because, god knows, we can't be trusted to control ourselves.