Fishing The Dung Stream
Withstanding our politics and our turd water, often one and the same
Yesterday, I sat down to write about the State of the Union Address, ever the dutiful observer of our teetering empire. Honest, I did. But I just couldn’t bear going through with it. When a family member asked if they’d missed anything, I told them, “Yes. You missed me wasting two hours of my life.” Actually, two-and-a-half, if you count me watching CNN’s Scott Jennings doing what he does best. (Lying about all the lies getting told.) Watching such spectacles is best left to us professional masochists. So I don’t recommend it to civilians. The same way I wouldn’t recommend chewing aluminum foil or autoerotic asphyxiation.
But if you were lucky enough to miss it, and are truly jonesing for a brief description, that can be quickly dispatched in three words or less: a gasbag gaslighting. There! Now we can lay that burden down, and move on with our lives. Or at least pick up new burdens, which can still feel like a reprieve. (Variety is the spice of rationalizing.)
My non T-word burden lately — I resolve not to even use his name, just to see if that’s still possible — has been getting skunked by winter. I don’t mind the cold terribly much. I will never move to Florida, and not just because I don’t feel like acquiring the neck tattoos and criminal record that’s required to fit in with Floridians. But because hiking up and down hills in snowy woods is one of my favorite pastimes. There’s nothing but silence, aside from the crunch of my boots. Of course, with the ice storm leavings that have plagued Maryland throughout most of this February, skating through the woods has been more like it as of late. It’s an invitation to go full Lindsey Vonn, and re-rupture my already-replaced ACL. However, man cannot live for months on end on heat-pump air. Sometimes, he needs to actually fill his lungs with the real deal, even at the risk of personal injury.
But my knee’s just fine. Lately, it’s my pride that’s been injured.