They are dropping bombs over Tripoli in the name of collective governments that for one reason or another deem one long-time tyrannical overlord no longer an acceptable member of their fraternity, when two states over a similar long-time tyrannical overlord had thousands upon thousands sitting in the center of the largest city - an ancient one that dates back to pyramids on the moon - and no one gave half a shit. The stories in our lightboxes tell us of the Gaddhafi murdering his own people, dropping cluster bombs of death onto innocents to get at the rebellious few. But they ignored the stories of Mubarak's oppression, because he is friend, who helps prop up the Israeli government's grip on a homeland built along deep sociological and historical fault lines.
But hey, sorry Gaddhafi, it was fun that you calmed your ways and stopped supporting state terrorism, whatever that actually is. The Al Qaeda-offshoot organization trying to overthrow your country, angry at you for not being the old you, shall now be the freedom fighters. The shi'a/sunni conflicts have escalated in the Middle East, and to most Americans that subtle difference is like calling an Ay-rab a "towelhead" or a "raghead". But there is a difference, one that becomes as deadly as the Catholic/Protestant conflicts of Northern Ireland.
We are being misled more than ever, and they don't even try to give us the mass media foreplay anymore. Distractions from nuclear disasters, Charlie Sheen pointing his fingers at the moon and everybody studying the fingertip like retarded dogs, trending topics becoming psychic shackles that we waste tiny ten minute parcels of our lives, only to find out the hype is over nothing essentially, that Rebecca Black is stupid or the fat kid powerbombing the bullies is nothing that none of us didn't see on the middle school playground at least once in our younger days. I realize all these things, and realize the buzz and hum of my homeplace is harder, better, stronger, and faster, and it makes me feel uneasy with my own presence in this world.
It is at times like this that I go out to sit on my plastic chair by the tree stump table next to my pig pen, snort at then, and listen to Shabazz Palaces. I do not listen to them in an actual digital form with sound going through speakers into my brain directly, but instead play the songs in my memory bank, exercising my mind to make sure there is still something there that is not tied to nonsense and trivialities. I memorize the lyrics and sounds when the cybermachines are around and making their noises. And I sit with the pigs - real pigs not metaphorical ones - and I let the songs play and play and play, and I think about this fucking world and how all the plate tectonics and irradiation and super moons possible don't change the fact that to this world, we are nothing. There are those who will hype you up about how the earth is crying or vengeful or wants us to change, but that is stupid. The earth and moon and sun and stars are not tied to us people at all, and will be here long after we have pulled our own fingers while saying "Watch this!" one too many times. So as I get caught up in the hum and buzz of our civilized madness, I let the words of Shabazz Palaces bounce around my brain, and overstand in my soul that to be aware is all I can do, that you can't change our collective destiny, and all I can do is try to breath as easy as possible during my short pitter patter across the surface of this spinning rock.
STEAL "Blast It"
NEXT: Poor people snorting drugs music!
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