Virtually dead

I just had a screaming moment in my brain. The New York Times has a new series in its op-ed department called The Stone. It is a forum for current philosophers to throw their problems at us. Today the series is in its third installment. I'll come back to it in a moment.

My talents for procrastination have turned this into laundry night. I hate doing laundry. Well, I don't actually hate doing laundry - I hate having to go into the laundry room. It is foul. Imagine the foulest place and this beats it by a factor of twenty. And tonight when I went it, it was super foul. It reeked of pot and was dirty with ashes strewn about and - a new low - someone had graffitied the walls. I would take a picture to show it to you, but it is foul and offensive, and I don't want it on the walls, much less on my blog.

So, freshly discouraged by this experiment in hell that is my neighborhood, I came in to the apartment, put on some Smiths, and went to the New York Times for some brain fodder.

The Stone had been updated, and today's update is: Should This Be the Last Generation? Ha! And it is chock full of "reasons" ("reasons" that are full of navel-gazing crap, by the way) for sterilizing humanity and letting this be the end.

And then, as I was reading it, Reel Around the Fountain came on. "It's time to tell the world / of how you took a child / and you made him old." And my head started to scream. It was too much. I finished reading Nineteen Eighty-Four today. Too much.

I am frustrated. Frustrated by the people who do have children and don't take care of them. Frustrated by the prevailing attitude of Clockwork Orange-style thuggery in the name of individual freedom. Frustrated that I don't have a place to live that puts some distance between me and this.

Someday when my life warrants an equal and opposite reaction to the one I've had today, I'll probably burst of happiness.

The Smiths - Reel Around the Fountain