aplus
10-05-2005, 10:46 AM
http://slumz.boxden.com/showthread.php?t=481962
Looking for feedback, good or bad...A+
Newspaper Meditation
Trapped inside a just-awakened morning haze, I sleepily scan through yesterday’s events. The front page says that government studies have concluded role models are no longer needed in America, due to apathy and the threat of litigation. The penalty will be incarceration for those maintaining virtue or fighting injustice, and anyone committing acts of valor will be executed on sight.
Page two boasts that parenting has now been simplified, since the Internet now teaches our wavering values to kids with minimal effort. The opinion section mentions the fallout from last weeks’ violence, when some tortured-soul teenagers bought high-caliber handguns with their fake IDs and unloaded ammunition at more popular classmates. The clueless housewives who were interviewed about the shooting wondered how it could’ve possibly happened in their quiet suburb. Then they all huddled inside gated communities while their husbands went out to purchase additional firearms for protection, without the bother of inconvenient background checks.
While my bland Cheerios become saturated with milk, I skim over an article about another anorexic Hollywood starlet binging on cocaine. And I peruse through other stories paraphrasing road rage incidents, holy-rollers bombing an abortion clinic, police brutality in neighborhoods where minorities have become a threatened species, and arson in the district where end-of-the-year insurance fires are commonplace.
After finishing breakfast, I could smell my indigestion at the concept of smirking Bush in the Oval Office and the economy slowly sinking like the Exxon Valdez. I look out my window and see puffs of smog belching from the back of buses, our skies tainted with the result of everyone heading somewhere else in a hurry. Soon, when I depart for work, I’ll add my polluted contribution to a nauseous ecosystem while driving past all the bums sprawled horizontally on park benches, our disenfranchised elders resting their wine-soaked joints after hours of panhandling. My car radio will soon mumble about rising teen pregnancy rates and stories of clergymen as sexual predators while I drive to the confines of a beige cubicle, my workstation in our increasingly McDonaldized society.
The sunrise is a low hanging tangerine, illuminating all the executive zombies walking by with cell phones stapled to their ears. Before I embark on my commute, I flip to a section of the newspaper filled with pictures of bright-eyed couples volunteering to get engaged, naively ignoring the statistical certainty that they’ll end up divorced. As the remaining sips of stale coffee wait anxiously inside my mug, I discover the obituaries and focus on a particular name, Harold T. Parsons. He was a decorated Army veteran of two wars, Korea and ‘Nam, just like my dad. I wonder how it would feel to successfully navigate through napalm-filled jungles, only to die in your sleep thirty-two years later and have your life summarized with a single paragraph and an outdated photo.
Looking for feedback, good or bad...A+
Newspaper Meditation
Trapped inside a just-awakened morning haze, I sleepily scan through yesterday’s events. The front page says that government studies have concluded role models are no longer needed in America, due to apathy and the threat of litigation. The penalty will be incarceration for those maintaining virtue or fighting injustice, and anyone committing acts of valor will be executed on sight.
Page two boasts that parenting has now been simplified, since the Internet now teaches our wavering values to kids with minimal effort. The opinion section mentions the fallout from last weeks’ violence, when some tortured-soul teenagers bought high-caliber handguns with their fake IDs and unloaded ammunition at more popular classmates. The clueless housewives who were interviewed about the shooting wondered how it could’ve possibly happened in their quiet suburb. Then they all huddled inside gated communities while their husbands went out to purchase additional firearms for protection, without the bother of inconvenient background checks.
While my bland Cheerios become saturated with milk, I skim over an article about another anorexic Hollywood starlet binging on cocaine. And I peruse through other stories paraphrasing road rage incidents, holy-rollers bombing an abortion clinic, police brutality in neighborhoods where minorities have become a threatened species, and arson in the district where end-of-the-year insurance fires are commonplace.
After finishing breakfast, I could smell my indigestion at the concept of smirking Bush in the Oval Office and the economy slowly sinking like the Exxon Valdez. I look out my window and see puffs of smog belching from the back of buses, our skies tainted with the result of everyone heading somewhere else in a hurry. Soon, when I depart for work, I’ll add my polluted contribution to a nauseous ecosystem while driving past all the bums sprawled horizontally on park benches, our disenfranchised elders resting their wine-soaked joints after hours of panhandling. My car radio will soon mumble about rising teen pregnancy rates and stories of clergymen as sexual predators while I drive to the confines of a beige cubicle, my workstation in our increasingly McDonaldized society.
The sunrise is a low hanging tangerine, illuminating all the executive zombies walking by with cell phones stapled to their ears. Before I embark on my commute, I flip to a section of the newspaper filled with pictures of bright-eyed couples volunteering to get engaged, naively ignoring the statistical certainty that they’ll end up divorced. As the remaining sips of stale coffee wait anxiously inside my mug, I discover the obituaries and focus on a particular name, Harold T. Parsons. He was a decorated Army veteran of two wars, Korea and ‘Nam, just like my dad. I wonder how it would feel to successfully navigate through napalm-filled jungles, only to die in your sleep thirty-two years later and have your life summarized with a single paragraph and an outdated photo.