Young Man's Game

Somewhere along the way, you hit Peak Outrage. It sounds kind of sweaty and awful, but that's only because it is sweaty and awful. Except it's also accidentally/serendipitously the same exact time when most of us are at our most interesting. Elvis Costello won television in 1977 when he blew up Saturday Night Live with a dragonfire rendition of the anti-media "Radio Radio." And then by 1998, he was working with Burt Bacharach to produce an album of songs that was, I think, simultaneously released on both terrestrial radio and in the produce section of your local Vons.

I wasn't mad at the guy, though. I'm still an unreasonably devoted fan, but that one wasn't aimed at me. It wasn't really aimed at anyone, I don't think. Except maybe that fucking Hal David. Nobody needs you anymore, David, you goldbricking genital-wart. Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Because that's what carrion crows do around walking corpses, you malingering, motherless twat. We've got all our own words now, and by a guy who can sing them too. Why don't you and Bernie Taupin and John Oates get together and shit out a tuneless poem about what it feels like to be as useless as a considered opinion in a focus group, you tone-deaf mercenary flailing fuck. Eat a dick, Harold.

Wow, that surprised even me. See, I lived through the election of 2000 and then was utterly shattered by the entire process and end result of the debacle of 2004. It took me ages to shake it out of my system really, probably not coincidentally right up until early November of 2008, but I will say that that experience and the intervening years adrift and (it seemed) unheeded by the powers that be proved to be my most productive, both in terms of quality and quantity in blogspace.

This shit you're getting now is the Muzak pabulum of a contented middle-aged person, slow-jamming it out, Bacharach-style. I'd reached and passed Peak Outrage through my early/mid-30s and paid the price of that level of involvement in disappointment, futility and, ultimately and inescapably, burn-out.

Outrage is a self-feeding steam-boiler of motivation, driving the piston of idealogical purity into an explosive frenzy of righteous action. Which in my case involved typing alone in my underwear up to a half our a day, a couple days a week. But still! I typed so hard while I was doing it, you guys.

Now when I type alone in my underwear, it's just one day a week. It usually takes me a little longer, but that's because I'm a little older, a little slower, a bit more contemplative and the internet is way more distracting than it used to be. I'm not sure how many nostalgic lists of things there are about stuff that happened in the '90s, but I'm sure it approaches infinity. It's a lot harder to get stuff done when I know somewhere out there right now is the answer to the question of how specific members of Congress are most like characters from Saved by the Bell.

But that Congress... they get a bad rap, but they've been doing a lot for me and I want them to know that I appreciate it. For men my age, usually to fight this creeping feeling of ennui, as the embers of sanctimony fade from white to orange to a cheery, cherry red, they buy a JetSki or fuck a co-ed. But Congress might be looking to spare me several thousand dollars and/or a fractured pelvis* by helping me rediscover my outrage. It may not burn as brightly, but I can feel it rising up. At first I couldn't really gin up the approbation I felt like I should over the shutdown, but every time they accidentally say what they think or stage a PR stunt at the expense of a helpless, honest working person whose awkward position they are responsible for, I think: yeah. Yeah, I could be that over-the-top mad about stuff again.

Or maybe they're slicker than I thought and they anticipated that cracked pelvis possibility. They'd do anything to keep people from signing up for that Obamacare.


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*Not saying which of those will cause which.