Birds, snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is shitting his pants

I don’t trust happy endings.

This isn’t meant to say I dabble in nihilism as a means of self medication, though. As far as I’m concerned, nihilists are just quitters dressed in black clothes. And the only time I go anarchist is when I’m on hold and some automated jerkoff is sweet talking me through options that don’t fit what I’m wanting to get fixed. 

Nah, my aversion to happy endings is the residual of having watched too many Walt Disney movies. (Dude was a sadist . . I mean, what kind of sick mind kills off Bambi’s mom?) Since I don’t get a discount on my therapy bills by blaming Disney, Imma just address the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room by letting loose with the reality that is busy pounding us upside the head on a daily basis.

We’re doomed.

It’s one of the many reasons The Lovely Fire works so very well. (Shameless plug? You bet your ass.) Writing about a zombie apocalypse is a natural progression. It’s like I said to Christy once. Writing about the end of the world is almost a refreshing break from the everyday. Don’t take my word for it, look around . . .

We have a fat bastard in North Vietnam who is testing missiles in other people’s backyards. What scares me most of all about Kim Jong-un isn’t that he will throw down the nuclear option but that one of his underlings will do it for him. The angry dumpling is a narcissist. He isn’t gonna commit what would amount to suicide by launching in anger. But what of the peeps on his payroll whose job security is an oxymoron? What if they decide they don’t want to wake up to a poor job review one day? The thought is more frightening than Tom Cruise’s dresser drawer.

The Mullahs in the Middle East possess enough bad medicine to deliver a horrifying postscript to civilian populations that don’t agree with their ideology. We’re talking about fellas who believe it’s okay to put a young woman to death for showing too much skin and who consider stoning to be a proper adjudication. These guys shouldn’t be able to own a slingshot, much less a nuclear program. And what we know of these madmen is that we don’t know nearly enough.

Which brings us to that cold blooded killer in Russia who is presiding over the second coming of the Iron Curtain whilst dressing it up as a Good Housekeeping Glasnost Edition. Vladimir Putin is playing one hand against the other, and he’s doing a pretty solid job to this point. Arguing that the former Soviet Union is too fractured to mean what it used to ignores the fact that a Wild West scenario allows Putin much more autonomy than his predecessors. Never a good thing when you’re dealing with a dude who really thinks he’s gonna rule the world.

And ruling the world is something Germany knows a thing or two about. Hey, if Hitler hadn’t been so ambitiously blind in his real estate grabs, not to mention strategically incompetent, who knows? Present day sees a much more agreeable Germany, but that ignores the fact they are plenty pissed off at the rest of the world. They’re feeling like the neglected friend who’s loaned money, gifted free room and board and who has received bupkis in return. From what I know of history . .  a pissed off Germany is really bad dinner company.

At least the leader board for the most important position in the world is looking good. Oh shit, yeah . . no. Welp, in the event size really does matter, we’re cool. But I’m thinking if things were that easy, President Ron Jeremy would have a bust that wasn’t attached to an STD.

And I’m curious, did the focus group that was polled after the GOP debate in Detroit explain why Trump’s penis size was an important issue to them? Comparable to, say . . national security, the economy or education? No? Nothing? Okay.

We live in dangerous times, and our political process is treating this as if a Seinfeld episode. It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so frightening.

My father was born and raised in Havana. He saw firsthand what happens to a country that is built on corrupt bargains. Things don’t end well. The lead up to Castro’s take down of the Presidential Palace was bloody and merciless. He witnessed people being shot on the streets, others rounded up and disappeared. All in the name of a promising sounding movement defined by someone other than the people.

We’re not a tiny Caribbean island, I get it. We’ve got too much structure, too many fail safes, and don’t forget Twitter, we have that too. Nothing bad can happen in a country that runs on Twitter. And yet, there went Mitt Romney and his boys last week; talking up a hostile takeover of the GOP that would lead to him becoming the nominee. Which feels very much like something that would happen anywhere other than here, doesn’t it?

We’re buried in the tangle of social media which allows us to feel connected, empowered. It’s how Trump won our attention, by manipulating the media to such a degree that Ray Bradbury would be impressed. Revolutions grow out of hopeless times, like weeds through the cracks. Some of them work to the betterment of humanity, others not so much. A President Trump? I don’t know, and it’s the not knowing that scares the living shit out of me.

This isn’t to say that all is lost, simply because I don’t feel all is ever lost. All is a very powerful thing. All is every single hope and wish and dream, big and small, said and unsaid. So ALL can never really be lost.

Being doomed is a different matter altogether. We are. Hopelessly so. But fret not, peeps, because being doomed has its advantages. For instance, studies have shown that more sex happens in times of adversity, and we get bigger and better parties, clearance sales to beat the band, provocative music, more thought provoking cinema and less Oprah Winfrey (She’ll be tied up with real estate deals on Mars).

Chin up, world.