I recently went “off grid” for a few days. I do this often. “Off grid” means something other than using a generator to power your TV. It means turning the damn thing off. It’s a retrenchment in reality. Listen to the media too much and you’ll start to believe their shit smells like flowers. Detachment: I heartily recommend it.
Unfortunately, going back “on grid” is always a shock. No matter how short my absence the world somehow gets exponentially weirder. Why? I have no idea.
Big (usually stupid) things go down in short times. The distance of a few days “off line” put it in contrast and show the hyperventilating yahoos for what they are. Once I went on a canoe trip. The fishing was fair and the weather was pleasant. It was an average week with the sun rising in the east, water continuing to be wet, and all such things as they should be. I could be forgiven for thinking it was a week like any other. Yet the nation chose that moment to go apeshit. I paddled away from a nation that had been seeped in sub-prime loans and unsustainable stock levels that everyone pretended was not a bubble. It had been so for years and seemed likely to continue (despite my misgiving). I came back to find a smoking crater where the stock market had been, the Fed was burning non-existent dollars in amounts that require a review of number theory, and inexplicably the government owned two of the three Detroit automakers.
Also, someone robbed my truck while I was gone. A pox on them all! I hope they starve to death while honest self supporting folks like me go elsewhere. I was also pissed off about the truck.
I’d like to say the weirdness is an unusual event but it isn’t. The last time I went “off line” I drove away from a world where so folks in Egypt were protesting with twitter. When I came back the many “revolution nations” were a thousand mile geography lesson and we were involved in a “kinetic euphemism” in Libya.
This time when I came back the first thing someone said was “have you heard the news?” Oh shit! What stupid thing had gone down this time!?! Had the government nationalized the Twinkie industry? Did they sell Ohio to France? Set fire to Wall Street (again)? Invade Botswana? Bomb Timbuktu? Start a war with Luxembourg? Nothing in my imagination is ever as weird as whatever really happens. Good grief…what had I not imagined?
Osama? Dead? Double tap delivered by one of our fine boys in uniform?
Whew!
On behalf of myself and any other Curmudgeons who aren’t plugged into the 24/7 news cycle I’d like to thank the entire universe (and especially the military) for staying on task and making good news happen. For a brief time sanity has prevailed. Tomorrow the foolishness will probably return but good news is always welcome.
