The Price Isn't Right

Saturday May 24th, 2008 - Lake Villa, IL

No gig tonight and that makes me feel bad but not as bad as watching the news lately. It is now to the point where I don’t even want to hear it anymore. It totally depresses me and that’s the last road I need to go down. All the horror stories my grandparents predicted are starting to come true and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. This joke isn‘t funny.

What’s the REAL reason gas prices are climbing higher than Sir Edmund Hillary? Who really knows? I’m quite sure there are a guarded few that created this panic and they’re all thrilled to sit back and watch the rest of us scramble around like cockroaches when a light comes on. We can’t do anything about it but sit back and watch our great nation collapse.

Oil shortage my pasty white ass. There’s no oil shortage. There’s probably a glut but we are the ones getting played like a banjo. Every time I turn on the news I hear horrific tales of how this is only going to get worse and all it reminds me of is when I was a kid and the ‘oil shortage’ then was going to be the end of us. Today I see it all from a different angle.

Maybe I listen to Coast to Coast AM too much but I really am convinced this is all a big pile of donkey poo. Someone somewhere is running the world and our country and it isn’t anyone the public has heard of. I know I’m cynical but I really believe we’re being jobbed out like cattle and sold down the river for pet food and soup meat. Party time is now over.

My grandpa and I used to have conversations about this back in the ‘70s. He was totally convinced it was a scam back then and looking back on it he was correct. He was the one who taught me to never believe anything the government or the media says until I think it through myself first. He told me if I was smart I’d eventually be a cynic too and it’s true.

He told me the world was screwed before any of us got here and we just need to make a way the best we can. He never believed in God or religion at least when I knew him. He’d looked into it and thought it was all a big dead end and I’m thinking the same way myself.

I wish I didn’t think that but I do. Like those words of the song say - ‘Oh yeah, life goes on…long after the thrill of livin’ is gone.’ Maybe I’m getting old and crotchety but I don’t think this is going to turn around any time soon. We’re coming up on some rough times.

Will it be the infamous ‘end of the world?’ I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon - if ever. We as a human animal might be wiped from this planet like a dingle berry but the planet itself isn’t going anywhere. It’s been around for gazillions of years already and this scenario has probably come up many times before. It’s ALL been done before.

There are still wars and hatred and ugliness all over the place and it’s not getting better. The Jews and Arabs have been fighting since who knows when and that’s not even close to being settled. And all of it seems to be in the name of some kind of a ‘loving’ God too.

That’s still an issue with me. How can any kind of loving God make such a beautiful rock way out in space and fill it with so many complete idiots to run it? It doesn’t make sense.

To me this planet is like some remote location of a fast food franchise that the corporate office can’t find anyone qualified to manage and we’re running it into the ground as fast as we can without management to stop it from happening. That’s how it feels to me now.

There are a whole bunch of bigger and more important planets that are getting all of the attention because they’re bringing in the revenue but we’re out here in the sticks all alone with nobody to haul in the reigns. None of us speak the same language and it’s anarchy.

I don’t know why I got to thinking so deeply today but that’s where my head was. I had just about enough of the news broadcasts so I shut both the radio and TV off and intended to get some work done but my brain kept spinning about all this stuff. It’s very depressing and takes away a lot of the optimism I was starting to feel. Who wants to see life go sour?

News media lead me to start thinking of all this. It’s the exact same stuff that we talked about back when my grandpa was alive. Thirty years later it’s come full circle and even a little bit worse. Now it’s a globally unified mess and the problems seem to be way bigger than they were before if indeed there are any ‘problems’ at all. I still have serious doubts.

Why can’t there be enough food and water for everyone? Why can’t fuels be cheap and plentiful or technology be worked on that makes new forms of whatever we need that can be distributed to the people who need it and nobody has to go through life in such misery?

I guess I have a total disrespect for the human race in the big picture and that’s not what life should be about. What is the meaning of all this? Why are we here? Is it some kind of universe reform school where we’re sent to learn some lessons or is it all random chance?

And who has real answers? Gramps now knows if indeed there is a next world as does my old man. Neither one has come back to give me any kind of a hint as to if there’s any reason for all of this and I feel like I’m peeing into the dark and hoping to hear a splash.

I feel so alone and clueless. Where is God? Where is my guardian angel? If I have one I want to meet him someday so I can pull his wings out feather by feather and kick his robe hoping there’s a little pink angel butt inside of it somewhere. Why couldn’t he warn me?

What has made me come to this point of thought? My grandpa was there when I was an optimistic kid and it used to deeply trouble me to hear him express a lot of the very same feelings I just did but now all these years later I completely agree with him. Am I wrong?

I sure hope so. I want nothing more than for there to be a God of love that makes things right at some point and when it’s all over shows us why we were here and what it was all about and then shows us our place of eternal reward but at this point I think it’s all crap.

And I’m sick and tired of getting barraged by the religious zealots who tell me that I’m going to hell if I keep questioning God. Hey, I’m IN hell. We all are. What did we do to get sentenced to tour this cosmic carnival where nothing makes sense? The joke‘s on us.