Cactus Remote
Updating this on Thanksgiving cause I've got a bubbling writing fever and there's no where else to splooge stream of conscious ruminations,..at least not without heavy editing. Plus, I don't have to endure obligatory "I'm so thankful" posts, nor the predictable politically correct (and factually correct) finger-pointing at Christopher Columbus et al, ["did you know that all the Native Americans were genocided by white people?"]. Social media can rot in hell forever. I hate what the Internet has become. The Pilgrims would have heavily restricted the Internet if they had it in their time.
Here in the slums of Livejournal I can ramble on amidst Russians and celebrity worshippers, free of having to think too much about word choices or concrete arguments, nor imagined counterarguments, and inevitable contradictions.
Thanksgiving, like Christmas, and to a lesser extent, the 4th of July, Easter, and the Superbowl, are like any other day for me, albeit a pleasant day off due to government employment. I haven't done anything seasonally appropriate for any of these days, or at least not since my parents kind of gave up on forcing me to participate (2005 or so). My Thanksgiving memories consist of the one year I was back in MA, after leaving Austin, and Sarah Beers was over (cause she didn't do anything seasonally appropriate either), and my mom felt bad, cause she was going to leave us at my place, and go to some family event. She couldn't help but buy us these platters of prepared fried chicken from the grocery store, and so Sarah and myself binged on all this terrible greasy fried chicken while watching "Uncle Buck." This was before I drank alcohol, so I am pretty sure I supplemented with soda, and I feel like Sarah had sparkling apple cider.
I think it might have been the year before that, when it was Christmas Day, and I was eating a bowl of cereal for dinner, while wasting lots of time on Soulseek looking for Japanese indie pop. You would think that, by 2018, my dad would appreciate my wholehearted disinterest in participating, but I'll be damned if he doesn't call today, like every other day mentioned save for the Superbowl, and sound sad over the telephone when I tell him that Thanksgiving is just like any other day for me and I am relaxing at home. Yeah, you could make the case that he would like to be present with all of his family members on these holidays, like you're supposed to be, but it's more like he is disappointed that I am not feasting at Lisa's house with her family, or eating a hot Thanksgiving meal at a local Church soup kitchen. It's like impossible for him to conceive that some people just don't give a fuck about this sort of thing.
Easter is the funniest though because I don't think there was ever a time in the past when I was excited to celebrate Easter. I can remember 1 or 2 Easters, when I was a small child, and I was happy hunting for painted eggs. This was in Maine, probably early 90s. But every other Easter memory consists of fighting with my parents over having to wear uncomfortable dress clothes to church. I remember one year, maybe '97 or '98, where I questioned my parents as to why the God would care about my outfit on this one particular Sunday. Naturally they responded with some unintelligent brainwashed shit. The point I am getting at is that I never really felt any attachment to Easter as a holiday, but yet, my dad will call me on Easter Sunday and ask me what I am doing, as if expecting that I am going to answer saying that I am just getting back from Sunday Mass, or eating Easter ham and pineapples at Lisa's house.
I guess that, being a US American (born and raised), shit like Christmas and Black Friday, the Superbowl, New Years Ball Drop, etc, is all one really has in the way of traditions. Not being religious or patriotic, or interested in sports, all of these traditions are rather spiritually unfulfilling. There is little attachment to this hunk of land demarcated as "United States of America." And more, and more, I find that people around me who watch TV regularly are, to put it kindly, the most boring motherfuckers to talk to,..ever. This is not to say that they are objectively bad or stupid, should be culled, but such individuals are really not creative or inspiring in regards to thoughts. I betcha that almost everyone in the US who regularly watches television is unquestionably into what they must perceive as necessary participation in American holidays.
In general I just don't see how consistent immersion in state-sanctioned media can result in open perception, especially with regard to asking oneself questions about things and why things are the way they are. I can't really blame these passive receivers though. I am just so burnt out on being around them, whether at work, at home, or out in public. So burnt out on the dominant culture, and burnt out on the braindead Red vs. Blue political battle. I can't even read a fucking article about local weather without coming across the Reds blaming the Blues, the Blues blaming the Reds. It's all so pointless to me, because no one is doing anything serious with regards to the continuous trashing of the planet, and that is all that will really matter in the next 50 years or so. Maybe I would go register to vote if there was someone honest and heroic who could actually be elected, and who could realistically begin dismantling civilization, rejecting the infinite growth economic model, but that is never going to happen, and to really make a difference, it would have to happen globally, and this is truly the stuff of fantasy. Plus it is too late, as far as I can tell from my recent foray into researching environmental doom. So fuck it. Might as well, and that's probably what the 1% have concluded already->spend into oblivion, ride hard and crash hard!
