Slack jaw, not much to say

by anna at 06:39 PM on March 09, 2005

The government/multinational corporation complex prizes predictability above all else. They'll tolerate all manner of diverse behavior so long as it can be predicted and thus managed. They cannot tolerate erratic behavior as it is volatile and unpredictable. That's why terrorists, rapists and serial killers can flourish. You never know how or when they'll strike. It's also why society holds them in the worst disdain.

The media pitches in to perpetuate this despicable predictable status quo. 24-7 they enforce the crushing sameness of our days. In the AM it's traffic and weather on the nines. It is hot. It is cold. It will rain. It will clear up. To be safe they hedge their bets with percentages. This way they are always right. Or always wrong. Or something.

There are accidents in the usual accident places, causing the usual backups in the usual backup places. There are places were the roads are woefully inadequate. There will be tie-ups and delays there regardless of accidents. They might as well play a prerecorded message with the helicopter sound effect. Hell, for all I know they do. All I know is that by the time I inch my way up to the supposed accident site it's always gone.

Pick up the paper and there's your personalized horoscope. Never mind that millions of other people share your sign. The same vague things that will happen to you will happen to them too. Good fortune will come your way. You'll meet that special someone. Or today might suck. Might as well stay in bed under the covers.

After work it's the evening news. Ad after ad for remedies to imaginary ailments with side effects far worse than the original condition. These are punctuated by stories with death tolls. This many dead in the fighting there. That many dead in the latest earthquake, tsunami or mudslide. These are accompanied by stock footage. The announcer makes the same pained expression local anchors make when describing a house fire. Not that they really care, any more than you do. It wasn't their house.

At some point they'll turn to the day's happenings in "the market." The Dow Jones index is up. Or it's down. Or most remarkable of all, it is unchanged. Swarms of traders traded all day and nothing changed. They too should have just stayed in bed. I'm reminded of the scene in Bonfires of the Vanities, where the stockbroker explains Wall St's dirty little secret: They don't really care if the stocks they tout go up or down, so long as people keep trading them. The crumbs will keep falling off as the cake is sliced again and again. Eventually all those crumbs add up to an entire cake and they buy that dream cottage in the Hamptons. Investors wind up fleeced by the Enrons of the world. Heads they win, tails you lose.

They act as if the damn thing is a living being with ideas and feelings all its own. "The market dropped sharply in response to rising oil prices." "Spurred by soaring unemployment figures, the market rose sixty points today." Andy Rooney had it right when he mused, "Who is this Dow and what's he got going with this Jones?"

Day after dull day this goes on. It's like those ubiquitous talking screens in Orwell's 1984. You grow numb to the death tolls and human suffering. You halfway believe your horoscope. You begin to believe that the weather, traffic or stock fluctuations impact you personally. You even toy with the idea of asking your doctor if Ambien is right for you. You won't be operating any heavy machinery in your stupor, after all. And a drugged-out stupor is what the complex want you in. That way you may fail to realize what's afoot.

It's like The Matrix. So long as you continue to believe this quasi-life they've foisted upon you bears some relationship to real life (as porn bears some relationship to gratifying sexual encounters,) then, for all intents and purposes, it becomes real. And that's truly pathetic.