"Life's no fun without a good scare"

Sigh. Isn't it strange how every few weeks we're struck, either by some unforeseeable catastrophe or stricken by an impromptu private sorrow, by that overwhelming reality of, you know like, grown-upness? With everything going on around us - with this nation on what I truly feel is a generational revolution, I can't help but feel half privileged and half indignant that fate chose to bring me to fruition at such a turbulent time. At the same time though (and this is why I feel "privileged"), I think it's almost inevitable that every culture at its heyday realizes its hubris at some humiliating and crippling moment, and it happens every thirty or so years, or basically third-centennially. Our parents saw the socioeconomic makeup completely make over itself in the 70s; their parents saw America lose half its workforce (but come out a superpower) in the 40s. There seems to be some inherent difference though that is SO hard to put my finger on (TWSS*). Is it that America is finally getting its wrist slapped in the most translatable sector (the economy)? Is it because the war's on our turf now? Is it because, with the thoughtfully ruthless noise of interwebs and blogs and Blackberries (thanks McCain!), we can hardly ignore each other? I dunno. What is going on?

Anyway. Times, they are a-changing, that's for certain. I was just perusing YouTube and for only YouTube explicable reasons I ended up serenading myself on Danny Elfman's masterpiece, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I don't know why (maybe it's because I had already drank some vino, which by the way I indulge in only when there's too much oxygen in the air), but this little diddy rings as aesthetically valid and inspirational as it did when I was seven. Fear... awe... some sort of compulsion to march around in blind obedience to the Pumpkin Throne? How many things can you say make you think THE SAME EXACT THING you thought when you were 15 years younger? Touché. American apocalypse may be upon us, but so are the holidays. And I sure as hell would rather watch a flaming Jack Skellington than another minute of that Pitbull in Lipstick!



* That's what she said.