As I quietly watch the whales die

by D. Sparks
As I quietly watch the whales die, I get a morbid satisfaction in the fact that behind my disgust for these putrid creatures, that the words of Benjamin Franklin ring true today in the modern American suburban landscape.

"He that's secure is not safe."

"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things."

"If you desire many things, many things will seem few. "

Truer words could not be spoken today.

As I sit here typing at the keyboard of this gas station computer, working the graveyard shift, doling out gasoline, high-fructose corn syrup by the gallon, energy drinks, cigarettes, lottery tickets, black and milds, blunt wraps and Steele Reserve by the case to a cast of ever changing characters playing a bit role in the history of the early 21st century, something is almost eternally unnerving about the typical character of the typical customer in this oh-so-typical gas station in this oh-so-typical blacktop nirvanna in the heart of it all - Southern, Ohio.

Collectively, we have truly turned into a shit rubble pile of incable humanity. I am not happy to report this truism, but it must be said, in no uncertain terms, over, and over and over until we collectively understand and correct this beast, or die like whales caught in a high tide of Biggie Sized expectations and driven by a million fantasies of human acceptance - the most essential cog in the American beast - the need to be accepted by others, no matter what the cost to our fortune, belongings, community, and ultimately, personal dignity.

American consumerism, in it's many forms of Freudian advertorial inspiration and foundation, has truly turned the typical American incapable of any conversation or consideration of normality outside of the drive-everywhere happy-go-lucky Jetsonesque world of highways, parking lots, Jesus Christ mania, bad Clear Channel Radio spitting out Nickleback and Fiddy Cent through the speakers of forever meandering through Burger King parking lots nationwide while Monday Night football offers up another episode of big bad ass knockin' your faggot ass dick in the dirt.

It is truly the kind of surreal cultural nightmare - one where Giant sculptures of Christ erupt from the landscape while the prison industrial complex looks down upon the orgyesque sea of never ending discount malls and adult bookstores in ironic pleasure - that only a Salvador Dali rendering could do justice.

One can never quite decide whether to blame the evil genious of Madison Avenue, and its giant network of ad men across the country, pitching line after line of copious bullsmack about the newest improved, better smelling, fresher, tastier, smoother, wrinkle-reducing, gut-busting, refreshing knick-knack of the moment, or the do-do bird like obedient nature of the majority of American homo-sapiens who pass through the doors of this addiction gallery like so many strung-out crackheads seeking solace and pleasure behind the boarded up windows of another abandoned home. Abandoned homes which litter our landscape like curls on used bikini wax.

I would tend to blame the evil genius, and the willingness, promulgated at nearly every turn in this American existance, on the psychological malaise facing us at this time like a cancerous anus, oozing with the pus from so many boils created by the breakdown of nearly all immunities, real and imagined.

For it is he in this life with greater abilities of reason and know how who are charged with the task of taking care of those lesser. There is no greater crime in my eyes than one who uses their intelligence, power and influence for advantage over others of lesser intellectual means and/or abilities. Yet, as I look out upon this vast expanse of blacktop desolation and Nokia swamps, and what does one see - an entire society derived and based upon the willingness and utter necessity to do just that.

Yes, we're one giant Hobbesian clusterfuck stuck together by commonality of mayonaise, syrup and automobiles: the most evil and dibilitating of all of the modern technologies that we have accepted into our life as invited pimp. It's the one that has enabled our get anywhere anytime at any cost to get anything collective way of life.

Yes, Virginia, there may be a Santa Claus, but there is no dignity in a nation of obese T-shirt wearing wunderplumps. Only a perpetual state of infantilized existance upon which no true sense of personal freedom could ever be achieved, let alone considered within' the realm of daily normality.

For you see Virginia, yours is a nation that became beasts really due to no real fault of their own. It was, and continues to be, presented in so many forms, as reality - something that the average citizen would never consider even questioning. After all, history shows us example after example of societies where within' the everyday normality of the average citizen, behaviors ranging from heroic to barbaric are able to be elicited by puppet-masters holding the strings. The behavior of collective populations has been able to be manipulated by those who wanted to use it to their advantage time, after time throughout history. And our time is no different.

We're often really living in nothing more than a historical continum of practiced behaviors, rituals and traditions of powerful economic interests subjegating populations through brute force or psychological manipulation and outright brainwash, programming. The kind of programming that leads to a disdain for the overtly intellectual, and a feverishly inante desire for $1 cheeseburgers, and for the supposed expectation that this never ending merry-go-round of gout inducing comfort will never end.

But every party comes to and end. Anyone who has paid scant attention to our crumbling American economic house of cards can tell you that. America is heading into a shit-pit, and fast, and doesn't have a population cable of growing a tomato bush without instructions from Rachel Ray, let alone function as a free and free-thinking individual.

So therefore, in these times when our sea of "look at me" citizenry, stuck in a cycle of perpetual juvenalia continues unabated into the grave where corpses are buried under mounds of processed meat and cheese, I can only do but one thing:

Sit back, grin, and watch the whales die.