Driving home today over the San Mateo Bridge, with the wind catching our light car and shoving me into the other lane, I was hit by a wave of contentment for the work I'm doing and for the home I'm heading to. There's always something with me; never a moment that I'm not agonizing over a thought. A thought which pushes me toward some drastic solution that I fantasize about, often revolving around a plan of escape. It's been the school, the job, the town, the person, you name it. I took a moment to enjoy this feeling and then lost it.
Everything gets muddled doesn't it? Who thinks straight any more? I watch the politicos on the tele and wonder how they manage to deliver on such concise terms, although often saying absolutely nothing. How do we stay on track? Where did focus go? I'm thinking this when a little flimsy Ford Focus flies by me (always on the right in California). Oh, the transparencies in the domain of motor vehicles! Give me your Excursion, Explorer, Land Cruiser/Rover, Escape! As if to say, Let's get the fuck out of here! Or for the impotent ashtanga-spiritual deskjockeys the Insight, Focus, Breeze, Elantra (sounds like elan, elation!). And on a side note I'd like to mention that new Dodge models have the most powerhungry homoerotic names possible: Magnum, Nitro, Caliber, Avenger. Like petnames for military toys.
I'm thinking this and checking out the new billboards. I have them all memorized now along the great Bay Area loop from the Bay Bridge to the San Mateo. I, along with other drivers, enjoy the respite of new media and relish the experience of new eye candy. Carrie Underwood smiling with her beautiful symmetrical face and breasts at the Bay Bridge merge, I was sorry to see her go, but it never made me want Vitamin Water. Let me tell you, we all are very much over the Apple billboards with silhouetted dancers kicking and shaking. Currently a 30X20 smiling face of Kevin Costner looms over 101-80 interchange, goddamn is that unsettling, especially since it explains nothing about his coming movie. He's happy? Is that it? I bet, he's filthy rich and a self-proclaimed director/actor extraodinaire. Dances with Wolves was good, I'll give him that.
I turn on NPR and try to drown out the stop and go. Cathleen was telling me the other day that an international news mediasaur haunts the airwaves on behalf of the United States, informing the world on our national affairs. There were two things that interested me the most about this. First, apparently it's illegal to broadcast this media source within the nation, a perfect framework for unchecked misinformation. The other is that the broadcast conveys everything using 1500 words, a strategically whittled down vocabulary for communication purposes. I'd really like to hear one of those programs. For now I roll down the window and turn up Talk of the Nation.
There's a giant dispassionate looking dude leaning back in utterly useless pearl clothing with a giraffe chilling behind him on the plains. Abercrombie & Fitch. Grisly technique those fuckers have. I'd take the elite trophy whores of Bebe over them any day. It's okay though cos this billboard lets me know I'm close to home.
3 comments:
To minimize the dissemination of mistaken fun-facts, I will correct that there are actually 1,500 words in the core vocab bank for "Simple English" and I proffer this article in the interest of full-disclosure:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/washington/31voice.html
I think it's actually a pretty groovy concept--reminiscent of the Peace Corps, but better-executed.
Always nice to see tools of the Dark Lord throwing off a little light.
(apparently blogs aren't very link friendly)
Damn, dude, I need to get a functioning TV. I've got one, but it's only dialed-in to the digital shit the Feds are passing next year. Dunno what's going on with the politicos, except if the Democrats fuck this up I'm going to set out for Tasmania on a slow boat. Most of the time I'm slinging garbage so NPR is all disjointed by the trappings of park users...boosts the immune system, though.
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