The Shopocaplypse is Near!

Whoa! I'd forgotten all about that one. Where does Mike find this crazy gibberish? He knows Jigglebox better than I do! In the words of Bill Murray playing Hunter Thompson in that evil 1980 film Where the Buffalo Roam that set the course for my adult life (and thus ruined it): "Did I say that? Shit. I must have meant it."

More and more of my words from the past seem written by someone else (and are thus impossible to edit, by me anyway). It's weird. Anyway, thanks for that additional link. I may have said this before but I'll say it again, in Fred's defense, that coast is insane, it's winds deeply unsettling.

Unless you're me, of course, to whom the whole of our Starfucks-Costco-Quiznos consumer-demented society is WAAAY MORE UNSETTLING. Driving through this suburban (and urban) gauntlet of uber-homogenized, aesthetically-appalling, clone consumer "outlets" is enough to make me want to vault my corpus dictum onto the outer perimeter razor wire of the nearest for-profit prison. (I say outlet, though what worldly frustrations could be "let out" by visits to such spiritually-draining environs is beyond me.) And if that sounds crazy, I wonder: how crazy is it to try and escape into prison when the whole ugly-ified civilized world has come to feel like a prison, of sorts? A prison of corporate logos. A prison for your eyes and ears, at the very least. Such environs make the winds and brutal blue sea of the Lost Coast seem all warm and fuzzy by comparison.

I say all this and yet I know what I really need these days, and it has more to do with love and family and friends and increased social contact, to be needed and useful and inside the world again. And I need off this little boat. This writer's life has cast me way too far adrift. I imagine that once safely back inside the world, I could better cope with the glut of Wal-Marts. Maybe even the Starfucks.


But I'd still have to attend regular services of The Church of Stopping. Because the Shopocalypse is near!

Reverend Billy always sings to the lowest prices of my macchiato soul. Never has anyone so boldly articulated my consumer angst. May the Good Lord bless and keep you, Billy.

Tis God's work you do, I say.

Amen.

Postscript: I was well pleased to discover, on punching macchiato into Google to check the spelling, that the word, bastardized by Starfucks, is actually Italian for "stained." Sweet irony! Oh, coffee, how Starfucks hath stained thy good name!