For over three years I have found a suitable talking point for our weekly chat. Today, though, I’m coming up dry. Well, dry is not the word since many things clutter my mind with varying degrees of wonderment and frustration. Corporate greed, political machinations that amount to the single creed of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, societal mutations that result in “stand your ground” legislation, and countless other facets of our day-to-day life have ganged up on me and I am left with but one acronym: AFU.
The A represents “All” and the U is “Up”. I’ll leave it to your level of acceptability in deciphering the “F”. While I may sound hopeless, nothing could be farther from the truth. I am pleasantly surprised that the power of social networks has manifested itself in sites like Change.org or Credo.org. AmericansElect threatens to upset the two-party status quo regardless of its ultimate success or failure. And who can argue that, without the internet, the Arab Spring would never have come to pass?
No, there’s much to be hopeful for, but I am still feeling overwhelmed at how myopic we can be. While many are in favor of health insurance for pre-existing conditions and keeping kids on family policies until reaching the age of 26, many more are opposed to the mandate that pays for such improvements. Time and time again, we want, but we don’t want to pay.
Where does it stop? When do we realize that the free lunch never existed and come to grips about what kind of country we want. We listen to viewpoints that we agree with so those opinions are never challenged and grow stronger through reinforcement regardless of their legitimacy. Obama’s a muslim...Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9-11...global warming is a hoax. The list not only goes on, but gets longer as half-truths and worse are foisted upon us in the name of advancing a particular hidden agenda.
So I’m taking a break, folks. Time will tell if I pick up the proverbial pen again. I guess that’s up to you, the loyal reader. I don’t know if you exist, but if you do please let me know. Everyone needs an occasional word of encouragement or, perhaps, a cyber-pat on the back. Regardless, I promise to continue questioning the insanities and incongruities that thrive only through our indifference. I hope you do the same.
3 comments:
Well gee, Bruce, (if I can manufacture a poor pun,) I want my money back! I just joined a couple of weeks ago, and now you're giving up? You must have hastily gone through MY blog, said "Jesus Christ, what kind of a reader am I attracting here," hastily bundled up your most precious possessions and hightailed it through the front door.
And after I was led to you by Joe the Shark, no less!
Well, no, I will NOT accept your resignation, suggest instead you don't be shy about spelling out "AFU" and things like that, and maybe relax! Take a fakeation!
Start writing about less weighty stuff! Look at me -- on my blog, Japs duel it out with Nazis, I sell real estate on Jupiter, I publish recipes for duffalo burgers, I lambaste the Taliban and the Pakistanis, journalistic frauds, historical frauds, profane and profound inanities, and somehow, the world lets ME get away with it!
So get back to work; you're NOT fired, and you CAN'T QUIT!
OK...OK! Maybe you're right about the fakeation. Ironically, I've had some editorial musings this week, but have resisted committing them to cyberspace.
How about this: I leave in 3 weeks for an around the country cross-country in my airplane. The object is to land in every state in the Lower 48 (interrupted briefly by 5 days of storm chasing in Texas/Oklahoma) and then write a book detailing the trip intermixed with anecdotes of my military and airline aviation career. A quasi-memoir, if you will.
I will reflect and regroup during the journey, return fully recharged, and delve back into the inanities we face every day.
After all, how can I abandon a faithful audience, even if it may only be 1? Thanks for the cyber-pat!
If there's one thing I've learned from having my blog, which started as some kind of a food thing but then gradually transmogrifried itself (no, I just made it up) because EVERYBODY had seemingly started food blogs, and damn good ones too! -- into a more stream-of-anything thing was, that there were a lot more people reading it than I actually thought.
I know for a fact that some people never comment because, well, they've told me so! But they're there. And I don't like Facebook at all and don't pay much attention to it, but when I suspend my account, as I am wont to do from time to time, in lonely protest, I get all sorts of worried emails asking why I'm not on Facebook any more. Whaaa?
I love to write, and I get struck by the most irrelevant things during the day that I just have to tell SOMEONE, or I come up with some dumb idea and have to tell SOMEONE, so I just put it on my blog. No one comments any more, because if you read my blog you'll see that it has slipped into a twilight world in which I am the sole dweller and, uh, to put it KINDLY, people just don't know what to SAY.
But they're out there -- I know they are.
And I just happen to be into all things planes so to find a pilot-blogger is just AMAZING for me, so to hear about your adventures tooling around the States sounds like paradise, as once I latch onto a blog (like Joe Sharkey's) that is even peripherally about planes it becomes an unshakeable daily routine. I do wish you wouldn't take it to FB but I should check in there more often so I can torment the childhood friends I rehooked up with a year ago and have absolutely nothing in common with any more and read your adventures at the same time.
And you can follow my blog as well. I'll try to sneak in a few more plane-related posts there for your very own amusement.
But keep on at it! You've got one certified fan!
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