Suddenly the Glue Stick kid started screaming “CHESS CHESS CHESTER CHESS! It’s all about fucking chess but what about ME! WHAT. ABOUT. MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” and he rapidly swallowed three pawns off of one of the closer games and choked himself until the school nurse could get him to vomit them up.

You gingerly reach over to your smartphone to see what time it is and the shock splashes across your instantly awake mind: four years? You’ve been asleep for four fucking YEARS?

The ethical dilemma is presented as thus for we myriad chickens.

The dog shit was an obstacle but one he could ignore or clean up if he chose those routes. The dog shit became an excuse for not doing something rather than an obstacle to overcome.

With the most recent surge of capitalism hate (and the ill-researched understanding of exactly what socialism is on both sides of the Partisan Divide), it seems that the culture needs to change significantly before the competing isms can provide a temporary dominance of the social over the capital. No more competitive video games. No more professional sports. No more television contests. No more grades in schools. The people on the covers of magazines must be chosen by lottery and anyone can enter.

We know we aren’t going to reduce carbon emissions by 70 percent. Ever. We know it and yet we keep barking and marching and lobbying for substantive change while driving to the marches, using paper to print the pamphlets while drinking out of plastic bottles filled with water stolen by Nestlé and grabbing a Hot Pocket or packaged bowl of yogurt.

Jack sits in a small room. He used to think the room was a lot bigger. It’s not.

Earlier in the year, Tom and Jack kind of went to war against each other.  First it was just namecalling and that sort of thing but then Jack keyed Tom's boat and all hell broke loose.  Vandalization of property begat slashing of tires and eventually, Tom and Jack, their wives and kids, were routinely out in their yards, hurling shit at one another and generally disturbing everyone on the block. 

Human beings are among the most vulnerable creatures on the planet. No armor, no big claws, can't fucking run fast, not particularly strong. Even the strongest man on the planet (you know, the redneck fucker who can pull a tractor with his teeth or hang an anvil from his balls) is just a thin-skinned hot dog meal to a mountain lion.

So we compensate with misdirection.

There are things for us to celebrate but perhaps we should put the party off for a few years while we get our shit together, clean up our own house, and strive to be the country we believed we could be rather than the nation we have become.