It's all so damn DIRTY.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, this joint is dead today.   

Guess I'll do some writing. 

Your avatar is NOT OK.

My avatar is cute.

NO. 

I had no choice. 

When the car finally ran out of gas, I started walking.  Fortunately, I have a good, sturdy pair of hobnailed engineer boots for kicking the coyotes and meth heads and rattlers away.  I also had the foresight to bring lots of water and pills.

This desert is really big, Nigel, it's fucking huge. 

All the Cacti look like people caught mid-stride as they fled from something.  Some of them even look like they have faces, twisted in grimaces of fear or loathing.  The rock formations all look like big, imposing buildings designed to show the power of the state, and contrast it with the weakness of the individual.

And there's wreckage, too.  Twisted remains of cars like something out of The Road Warrior (Part of which was filmed here, which is fitting.).  Sometimes the wreckage has footprints leading away from it, and sometimes there's just big clouds of flies surrounding the SUV with the little stickers of the family members on the back window.

I'm in the desert, Nigel, and the buzzards are starting to circle.  They let out screeches sometimes, screeches that almost sound like words.  I could swear I just heard one say "too big to fail".  Another one sounded like "national security".  And one was screeching something that sounded a lot like a rant about "God's will".

And one particularly fat and foul one sounds like it's laughing.  It sounds like it's having a real giggle, that perhaps we're ALL in the desert, now, and nobody lives anywhere else.  Sometimes the desert LOOKS like a snow-covered city full of the walking dead and closed factories, or maybe a pretty city with lots of smiling hippies who strangely seem like they're about to start screaming...but don't be fooled.  It's still the desert.

And those are some powerful big buzzards, Nigel.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I mean, I tried to be good, but this New-Style Century™ is just too different from the old one.  If I could get a rotary phone app for my crackberry, I'd probably be able to restrain myself from this sort of thing.  If I could eat the fish from a local stream, I'd obviously be a little more civilized.  If I HAD a stream to get fish OUT of, I'd be the next fucking St Francis of Assissi.

If my government weren't murdering people with an X-Box controller in my name, I'd be far less likely to show on MY FACE what THEY DO with the money I gave them for roads and schools and something resembling a social safety net.

Then I wouldn't have to do these horrible things.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's all so fucking sterile, Nigel...We kill from thousands of miles away, we outsource our torture, we pretend that we're the land of the brave and the home of the free, and that we wear the White Hats, because the blood didn't actually spatter on our personal clothing.

But it's all so dirty.  I can't do ANYTHING, anymore, without somehow profiting from 13 year old slaves in China or Malaysia or Myanmar.  I can't buy clothing that wasn't made by slaves in sweatshops (and they even had their own Triangle Shirtwaist fire!  Now THAT'S progress!).  There is no honor in honoring a flag drenched in the blood of innocents, and there never really WAS a time when that wasn't the case, was there?  Because before Pakistan, there was Vietnam, and before Vietnam there was Mexico and the Phillipines and China and let's not forget our OWN slaves and maybe those people that used to run the joint before we got here, who all volunteered to go live in North Dakota.

And so I sit here, pondering all these things, and I think maybe I'll just find this avatar here, see, this avatar that represents America™, as a nation, in all her glory.  Huge muscles, and a very small cranium, and an idiot's smile that says "Why, yes, I am in fact ready to do MY part to spread FREEDOM and THE GOOD WORD OF JESUS to those people who live in unfurnished nations and NO, I do not need to know the details.  Just show me where the bad guys are at."

My crime in using such a disturbing avatar is obvious; I cannot deny that I did it.  But I have to think that it is, when stacked up against every transaction I am capable of making, a very small crime, indeed.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I seriously need a new and better class of friends.

I just need a Blackberry that doesn't give me the impression of blood welling up from between the keys everytime I use it.

My friends are fine.  They just eat whatever slop is put in front of them, as long as it comes in a nice cardboard container.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

There.  The Bar is safe.

[trippinprincezz13]

But you try to show people the dirt and they just step around it, convince themselves it's not there - some even gleefully roll around in it. Even though I know it's there, I can't escape it - can't brush it off. The majority of the things I own, as you said, I'm sure are the product of someone else's suffering. I can try minimizing the damage I do, but with the way society is structured there isn't a whole lot to "minimize".

Trying to point it out usually gets a "Like" or "LOL u so crazy", nothing, or "it's that damn Obama's fault" since he was the only president ever, only member of the government and Fox News said so. I know just "caring" or "knowing" isn't enough to change anything, and many people have their plates full trying to stay above the water, but it just seems like everyone is happy to just keep rolling around in the pigpen as long as their TV and shiny objects stay in tact (guess they can't see the dirt on that either). It's just all so exhausting

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is what happens when they tell you to evacuate into the desert because of an oncoming blizzard, Roger. This is what they wanted. They're filling your backyard with grey goo now, and all of your condiments will be replaced when you return home.

You shouldn't have believed them. It's not too late. We can't stop PARTICIPATING in the evil, because the evil clothes and feeds us, but we don't have to sit here grinning while they post NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER over and over again in our favorite Facebooks group, just because we were told that's what we're supposed to do if we want to be Good Americans.

No, we don't have to take it just because they're On Our Side, Roger. And we don't have to SHUT UP.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

We can't stop PARTICIPATING in the evil,

This is the part that bothers me.  I'm not a purist or an absolutist, but I have at earlier times in my life criticized the "Good Germans" that stood by with their eyes averted, while their townsfolk were carted off, and I know I criticized the Turks for doing the same thing.

So I'm having a little trouble with being in any way complicit with slavery.  I just don't know what to DO about it, short of becoming some crank hermit.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

These problems are as big and inescapable as the Sonoran herself. A lonely, narrow highway lies across the top, both ends equally obscured by mirage. The illusion of water somewhere off in the distance, just a few miles away no matter how many miles you've traveled. But there are no detours, no worthwhile trails through the desert to take you away from the highway. If you go out there, well, you don't even have to be warned about going out there anymore. You can see what's out there. Dirt. Snakes. Scorpions. Twigs. Death. And besides, even if you did cross that wilderness, what would you come to but another highway, with one end aimed right back at the center of Tucson, and the other aimed off the edge of the map?

So you do what you must. Keep driving. Hands at 10 and 2, eyes straight ahead. Not because it's necessary and not because it's good or evil, but because there's literally nothing else you can do. If you live comfortably, you contribute to the problem. If you live like a hermit, you let everybody else contribute to the problem. If you speak up, you harden their resolve to ignore you. If you're lucky, there's a caravan around you, full of fools and dreamers, honking and screaming to keep you company. I wonder how many times history has repeated the Exodus?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

These problems are as big and inescapable as the Sonoran herself. A lonely, narrow highway lies across the top, both ends equally obscured by mirage. The illusion of water somewhere off in the distance, just a few miles away no matter how many miles you've traveled. But there are no detours, no worthwhile trails through the desert to take you away from the highway. If you go out there, well, you don't even have to be warned about going out there anymore. You can see what's out there. Dirt. Snakes. Scorpions. Twigs. Death. And besides, even if you did cross that wilderness, what would you come to but another highway, with one end aimed right back at the center of Tucson, and the other aimed off the edge of the map?

So you do what you must. Keep driving. Hands at 10 and 2, eyes straight ahead. Not because it's necessary and not because it's good or evil, but because there's literally nothing else you can do. If you live comfortably, you contribute to the problem. If you live like a hermit, you let everybody else contribute to the problem. If you speak up, you harden their resolve to ignore you. If you're lucky, there's a caravan around you, full of fools and dreamers, honking and screaming to keep you company. I wonder how many times history has repeated the Exodus?

Well, there's one other option.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

GNAW ON THE GUTS OF THE BEAST!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

We can't stop PARTICIPATING in the evil,

This is the part that bothers me.  I'm not a purist or an absolutist, but I have at earlier times in my life criticized the "Good Germans" that stood by with their eyes averted, while their townsfolk were carted off, and I know I criticized the Turks for doing the same thing.

So I'm having a little trouble with being in any way complicit with slavery.  I just don't know what to DO about it, short of becoming some crank hermit.

The only thing I have come up with that I know I can do is to STOP SHUTTING UP as often and as loudly as possible.

And to buy as few THINGS as possible.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

In seriousness, I've kind of decided that all I can do to affect Real Change™ is to intentionally force it in my little corner.

- Drop all my poisonous relationships as fast and as hard as I can. This includes my parents, unfortunately, but as they say on the Internet, "Ain't nobody got time for that."
- Try to inspire my kids to see through the bullshit and the smokescreens - not to see anything on the other side in particular, but to recognize a con when they see one.
- When I spend money, I make sure that it's on something I need and that will last as long as it should. And as much as possible, I pay my money to someone who will appreciate the business.
- Since I'm a nerd and don't mind setting up techy shit in my living room, I get all my Digital Consumer Feedstock for free*. This eliminates a whole ecosystem of leeches from my back.
- I try to make people wonder about things.





* except music, which I buy legally. And I'd buy other digital entertainment legally too, if they'd let me have it on my own terms.