There are easier ways to get venison

There’s probably some kind of evolutionary advantage to the way human beings can take any set of circumstances and, if they are consistent or at least in some way repeatable, integrate them into the cosmos of first routine, then “normal.” The joke is that poor kids don’t know they’re poor until someone else points it out to them, usually around junior high school age, often in the form of a rhyme accompanied by pointing. The Payless Shoe Source Pro Wing sneakers were always a dead giveaway.

The ability to absorb and assimilate is sometimes called “complacency” with a bit of a sneer, but it really is one of the great magic tricks of human emotional self-hypnosis. 9/11 was bad, but was it worse because of the horror of the violence of the event or because of the way it forcibly re-coded our preconceptions about our personal safety and the way in which we as Americans are viewed by the world? And further, if 9/11 happened every day in some form, at some level, how long would it take us to take it in our stride? I’m thinking of the famous bit of film footage from the Blitz in London during World War II where a man walking down a street leans over a piece of burning rubble to light a cigarette and casually continues on his way. Horror is horrible, but is it only thus because you don’t see it coming?

The side-effect, of course, is that we get blindsided and upset by alterations. Blindsided because the safety of routine constructs a natural sort of tunnel-vision, where we take our eyes off the road, confident in our ability to navigate the expected, so that any reaction we might have to an unforeseen curve or an animal crossing will almost necessarily result in corrective action that is too late, ill-considered and born entirely by panic. I call this the Highway Deer of Unexpected Circumstance. It is in some ways related to the Roadkill Skunk of Somebody Else’s Problem, but far more violent and, at least initially, a lot less smelly.

One ends up with lessons misapplied, if not simply missed, in a flurry of action dissipated by the heat friction of we generate in the act of flailing. Sadly, the only remedy is to be prepared for all eventualities at all times which is functionally impossible, especially now since the late-night informercial telephone psychics have all been chased away by scolds, ethicists and (probably) Scientologists. If there’s one thing a Scientologist will not tolerate, it’s someone making money preying on the psychological gullibility of others.

These days, of course, we all have computers, we all have television, we all have that other thing where you get sound out of it but no pictures... man, it... um... there are the dials in the front and you usually get one in a car... you know what, we’ll circle back to it.

So we’re inundated with new new new information all the time. And who can help, especially in the last week or so, but be astonished and transfixed and maybe just a little bit terrified by the looming, accelerating freight train of change. I’ve been alive now for just short of half of the life expectancy of someone who is, for demographic purposes, exactly me (white, over-educated, decent physical shape, crushingly handsome, sexually dynamic, etc.). I’ve seen a lot. Less impresses me than it used to, certainly. But if you had asked me 10 years ago, six months ago, hell six WEEKS ago if I saw any of this coming, being honest, I would have said yes. But I would have been lying.

Because deep down, the novelty of events turns my head, the nature of events transfixes me and the magnitude of them refuses to let me be no matter how monumental an effort I make. And in case it’s unclear, I’m talking mostly about the North Africa/Middle East foofaraw. This is not me freaking out because maybe it will snow on me this weekend in SoCal. I’m not that shallow. I can be moved by the struggle of my fellow man against the chains of tyranny in Libya and Egypt and whatever else Brownmanistan. They just want the chance to be hated for their freedom the way they already hate us for ours.

Seriously though: snow.

And oh... Radio! Thank God. That was going to bug me all day. That would have been tragic.