Vaguely annoyed with myself as I always am when I'm hungover. It's pointless to self-flagellate now, of course, but even more pointless to beat myself up over beating myself up. So I find it's best to give in to the original whuppin' and be done with it.
It was actually good to get out last night, stuck at home as I am most of the time with my beautiful little boy, 7 months-old thank you very much. My buddy Gary and I wound up at a place called the Stumbling Monk in Seattle, specializing in Belgian beer. (Read high alcohol content.) I'm not overly fond of the stuff, myself, and if I want a harder buzz I'd rather just drink harder liquor, but Gary's enamored of the place, so that's where we libated.
The conversation ranged over a lot of topics, and most of it was hotheaded horseshit, as per usual, but we stumbled onto something as we argued about the current state of the union that I now feel is worth working back over. I made the point that it might as well be 1930 given how bad the current times are economically— that it almost seems like we're in a slow motion collapse compared to the beginning of the Great Depression. Gary thought this was specious, since given the speed with which information is processed now as opposed to then, if anything the collapse should be quicker. But here's the nub that I stumbled onto at the Stumbling Monk: I'm not so sure that ultra fast information processing leads to quicker action. If anything, the citizens of this country seem paralyzed to deal with the truths that stare them right in the every day face. I could offer countless examples, but they all seemed to be summed up with the image of the gargantuan SUV with a Greenpeace bumper sticker.
Times are bad and will inevitably get worse, but it seems like most of us in the good ol' U. S. of A. are too busy processing heretofore unthinkably huge loads of information to actually act on any of it.
A bit of a depressing conclusion, but jotting it out while eating a bowl of Cheerios has helped ease and clear my sodden head, so that's something, I guess.