red onion

I planned, of sorts, to watch the debate, but I found myself avoiding my friends whom I knew would have it on. They are all about conspiracy theory these days and obsessing on Skull and Bones. I think they miss the forest for the trees on that one. You don't have to belong to skull and bones to tote the capitalist, globalization lines around with you. We have plenty of people in power doing this from all walks of life, like the brainwashed zombies that they are. I will note this similarity between skull and bones candidate Kerry, and skull and bones president Bush: they both don't know when to pull out...pull out of Iraq that is.

I ran into my friend Timmy today. I saw him walking to a coffeeshop on Esplanade Ave. I stopped to pick him up and we chatted and had coffee together. He is a comedien here in New Orleans of the alternative variety. He's an older white man with long, dirty blond dread locks. He wrote a book of his comedic admonitions and he bakes baklava for several coffeeshops. He said the trickle down theory of economics was beginning to affect him because he found a dime in the street the other day. He's hoping for a quarter soon, he said.

We marveled at the similarities between the words success and excess, as though one nearly can't be had these days without the other. Certainly, one can be greatly tempted to excess when one scores a success. The two words joined at the hip like twins seem an adequate description of capitalism. Success is rewarded with excess. Just look at the free trade agreements. Just look at CEO salaries. It would be interesting to explore the beliefs behind our tendency to excess in capitalism.

Timmy declined to participate in my invitation into a discussion on the tendencies of the practice of capitalism to include fascist traits. "I don't even want to think about it" he said. Okay, he is more interested in exposing the symptoms and traits of this hell-hole of an economic system that we, the human race has chosen to adopt; I want to expose its roots so that there is a chance to kill it.

I went home then and turned on the debate. But I kept flipping back to "Easy Rider", which was being shown with commercials, unforturnately. The graveyard scene in New Orleans is still one of the greatest moments in cinematic history, and unscripted at that. Peter Fonda's character knew they had fucked up by focusing on greed. A low-level feeling of doom hung throughout the film, emanating from Dennis Hopper's paranoia and Fonda's self-deprecation. I have a similar feeling about this country, this world, but I don't know what to do about it.