Nightmare of Daily Living. (Blogophilia 5.6)

I live in the suburbs along with the rest of the corporate sheep.  We put up with our bosses and hold our anger at the ineptitude and stupidity. Then we are released at the end of the week to hustle, bustle and consume the fractional distillates of our corporate culture.We hit the bars, wishing we were on Mars and away from the madding crowd. But we have been trained by the masters to worship things over people.  And this is what we get:

Mall Madness

My favorite description of Hell is from Dave Berg. He was a freelance writer best known for his strip "The Lighter Side" in MAD magazine. In one of his books, he describes a room with a banquet table that stretches as far as the eye can see.  It is sumptuously laid out with the best food and drink available in all the world. The guest are all gaily dressed and starving.You see, their arms are locked in a right angle, making impossible to feed themselves.The only way they can eat is to feed their neighbors and they are too mean to do it. So they sit and stare and wither away.   

Isn't this really how the nightmare begins? With the inability to consider our neighbor and in doing so bring harm to ourselves?

As I get older, I realize why my late Brother ran away to Alaska. He did it to get away from all this crap. To go up to the far frontier where nobody cares. Of course, I still do resent his cutting off of all contact. But that is typical of my family.  Five people, born in five different cities, leading five isolated, and very interesting lives.  That is what we know and how we live.

I never completely bought into the Corporate culture of power games and image, either.  I saw it destroy my Father.  Watch him get ready to go on the road to sell what ever trinket, beverage or financial instrument he was handling.  Half the time, he was really escaping my Mother, bipolar and alcoholic, resistant to all attempts at intervention. But it was a cowardly act, because it left the siblings to attempt to make sense of the midget on the sofa, and her anti Semitic babbling about how the world was evil and the world would come to an end. Yeah.  I  got cynical, depressed and self destructive.

And then I realized, when all is said and done we all end up in the same place.  Dead.  We might arrive there quickly or slowly. Violently or peacefully, but we get there. I've met actors, movie stars, corporate executives and jail inmates. All have made this journey interesting. 

What comes next/