A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

boiling point

Another confession.

No. Ezra didn't kill Mrs. Ezra, chop up her body and stuff the pieces in the crawl space under the kitchen.

No. Ezra didn't vote for George Bush in 2000. (He committed a far worse crime, according to the Democrats, by voting instead for Ralph Nader. Now he's inclined to agree. He really did vote for George Bush by proxy. Ralph Nader? Where are you Ralph? Has anybody heard from my old friend, Ralph? John, Bobby, Martin, Ralph. The good, they die young, or disappear into the background of history like Waldo, the elusive cartoon character of the '80s.. Where's Ralph? A conspiracy of silence has enveloped the caped crusader of the consumer wars. Has he spoken out against Bush's foreign policy? Against the killing of innocents in Iraq? Or did he slink out of Washington with his $3 million personal fortune between his legs? Is he working in a General Motors plant in Argentina? Maybe Michael Moore chopped him up and ate him for breakfast like Hannibal Lechter?

Ezra almost forgot what he was going to confess. Oh, yeah! In those vacant moments between forays into Schopenhauer, Heidegger or Kant. Ezra turns on the received truth tube, formerly known as the boob tube and watches a little tv. No, not the war!!! Ezra has tuned out the war. He only catches the random atrocity story , or the images of collateral damage that are shown on websites like The Memory Hole. The war can go to hell otherwise. Ezra only watches serious tv like MTV Spring Break.

Check it out! Luscious coeds in tong bikinis, cavorting pool side or on the beaches of Florida and the Bahamas. Swim suit contests! Rappers!

The producers have also come up with a little reality game contest called The Boiling Point. Tests of ordinary human endurance captured on hidden camera. A couple tries to check in a hotel in the Bahamas for their spring break, a well deserved break after a semester of burying their noses in the International Finance 201 tomes. They don't know they're being taped. A couple of MTV plants behind the registration desk tell them that there's no record of their reservation. The fake manager comes out, tries to smooth things out but deliberately makes things worse. They're offered the choice of the Presidential Suite. For a mere $650 a night! The bumbling desk clerk swipes the couple's credit card in the meantime, charging them $1,950 for three nights at that astronomical rate. Hey, these kids don't go to Cornell. They get hot under the collar, start losing their cool. They want their credit card and their money back. All the time the clock is ticking. If they last 15 minutes under the mounting pressure of stupidity, lameness and financial debt, they win $100.

In another skit, a 400 lb guy loaded down with gear plops down on the beach in the middle of a group of college students. He takes off his shirt, great balls of fat. Turns on the boom box full blast, shaves his feet with an electric razor. People start leaving. He starts a Jane Fonda workout. More people leave. The fat guy starts feeding the seagulls, attracting an enormous flock. We're down to a couple of girls from Jamaica, Queens left on the beach. Yes! They win the $100!

What do we get for living in Ithaca? Is this really a reality show (mentioned in a previous blog)? Are they filming all this with hidden cameras?

The potholes on Seneca St. Some deep and wide enough to be considered watering holes for yaks. The parking! Two levels of the Seneca parking garage are shut down for repairs. The elevator doesn't work half the time. Soon they'll be tearing up the parking lot behind the library. People will have to park in Lansing and be bused downtown. Construction on the Commons. Rattattattatattat - all day long. A symphony of jackhammers from hell. You can't walk on the Commons without being exposed to all the noise or tripping over debris. Imagine what it's going to be like downtown when they start construction on Cayuga Green!

Then you have the regular Ithaca bullshit. Stupid letters in the Ithaca Journal from moronic, flag waving ex John Birchers who want us to bomb every Arab country in the Middle East, suspend civil liberties back home and deport the anti-war demonstrators to Cuba.

Then there's the endless debate over allowing dogs on the Commons. Ezra noticed a cop chatting with a guy with 2 rather large furballs in tow the other day. Chatting away pleasantly. No citation. No warning. So Era walks up and tells the cop that it's his duty to arrest either the owner or the dogs. What ordinance, eh? Ezra should have made a citizen's arrest.

Finally, there's the end of March Madness Snow Storm that blankets the area with anywhere between 3 to 5 inches of white stuff. Haven't the ski resorts closed already? Surely we don't need more snow for the earth's ground table? Or do they mean water bed?

Boiling point? What boiling point?

"What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger." - Nietzsche.

Nature favors the strong. The 'blonde beast' who goes from rampage to rape to murder without a second thought. Is Bush blonde? A natural blonde? The Ubermenschen who can switch off the morality play channel in their brains, roll up their sleeves, do the dirty work that's required to build a super race. An empire of the strong, the amoral, the conscienceless and crush the weak in their path. (Did you ever note the 'science' in the word 'conscience'? Does that suggest a body of knowledge, a technology that has to be learned like physics? Do that teach that kind of 'science' up at Cornell?)

The future ubermenschen up on the hill who spend their daddy's fortune to acquire the skills needed to shape the future. If you don't think the future can be any worse than the present, think again! I can't imagine what kind of world most college students of today will create. Look what Ezra's generation wrought upon the globe, or the generation after his, for that matter?

Maybe it's not the generations that represent the problem, perhaps it's the script they follow that needs to be changed to guarantee a more gemutlich future? An interesting question for another long, soulful, thought provoking essay.

In the meantime Ezra thinks of the lowly cockroach. Nature favors the simple cockroach. How many millions of years has that hard bodied insect survived? Cockroaches are indestructible. Science hasn't come up with anything to annihilate them. Do you think some scientist up at Cornell is working on that problem right now? Do cockroaches follow a script? Do they read Nietzsche?

When they start the Cayuga Green project, the thousands of cockroaches living down below will simply throw their tong bikinis, boom boxes and credit cards into a suitcase and take a spring break. Can you imagine thousands of cockroaches swarming over the beaches in Florida, getting a tan, drinking Red Bull, partying until dawn. Then, when it's all over, they'll just move back into their new digs under Ithaca's future skyline.

No, Ezra is not that curmudgeonly to go so far as to compare college students to cockroaches! Is he?

But, then again, it's Ezra who's been watching MTV.

Well, perhaps he should run into the bathroom and just check himself out in the mirror? Find out if he's growing antennae or a cute little insect beak?

Have a nice day, Ithaca.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:26 AM