American Idiot

“Now everybody do the propaganda
and sing along to the age of paranoia.”

-Green Day

“What is 50 X 10?” a colleague asked the office. Everyone’s answer muffled to my ears, I confidently answered “500,000.”

I am very good at laughing at myself.

We all laughed at me and I shook my head in disbelief at my confidence. Honestly, I almost said 50,000. I don’t know if I was thinking in exponents, but even so, I would be exponentially incorrect. I realized that my answer was one of the knee-jerk variety rather than the figure-it-out variety. I know to count the zeros. I know that what is being asked is 50, 10 times. I wasn’t thinking. Only responding.

This is just a small, comical incident where I actually did know better; however, my confident wrongness got me thinking about what has always been the case but due to the algorithmic, silicone-scape we dwell in, it is prominent, inescapable, everywhere,

wait.

I’ve been tossing my phone aside a lot, which, in essence, is a surreal way of tossing aside an entire universe. Because I read books, I am often faced with a deluge of reels where highly-curated humans talk about the same 15-30 books. Because I write in journals, ads show up in my feed of highly-curated humans who look and act out the part of an observant human pontificating their surroundings, pen in hand. Because I go on walks, reels and reels of highly-curated humans talk at me about living an “analogue life”, off the phone. Journals, books, puzzles, watercolors, and all the things that I see when I look up from my phone are romantically and aesthetically displayed on my screen. Because I do not engage in or click anything, the algorithm has only a vague nebula to work with. I do not know how many pages of a book a person could read in the time that it takes to curate, create, and edit a reel about annotating a book. The cogs and wheels of the manufactured lifestyles and hot-takes continue. When I toss my phone aside, so do I.

This past week, the rhythm brought waves of highly-curated close-ups of unsavory people. Portraying the ugly as ugly is not new to me. Deflating egos is a tired trope, as well. Wrinkles. Blotchy make-up. Modest lips. A lone strand of hair on a forehead. Injection marks. We’ve all seen our own versions of this in mirrors with harsh lighting. A blue wave glorifies this exposé as if anything were exposed at all. The artist and critic Debbie Millman wrote briefly about the revealing vulnerability these executive members of the White House exhibited by simply agreeing to participate. It was their chance to finally have “cultural approval” and occupy the “realm of cultural legitimacy”. When I toss my phone aside, I can’t help but think that nothing was actually accomplished. That the stink of conceit is always stinging in the nose. Agreeing to a photoshoot with a photographer known for his grimy, up-close portraits? An interview where a White House worker doesn’t know to say “off the record”? Come on.

Days ago, a deluge of rain recently came and went, much like the snow before it. Outside, it felt and looked like early spring after winter’s thaw. Upon close inspection, everything was raw with wilt and wither. To look at it from a window, one might think about the slugs and worms just below the surface. One might think that a splash of color might be nice in this world where everything looks like aged, waterlogged lettuce. To be out in it, one’s boots squelched in soggy grass and once-frozen dog shit was soft and loamy, somehow still full of stink.

My face also has sun damage. My pores are cavernous and sometimes full of pus. Lone, bristly, black hairs grow on my chin and neck like little thorns. I have a pock mark on my nose and near my eyebrow. I have a faint mustache. A little double chin. One eye appears bigger than the other. Crooked little teeth. Almost non-existent lips. Tiny bumps on my forehead. Pimples. Ingrown hairs. Scar tissue. Poison ivy damage on my left cheek. Wrinkles. My favorite wrinkle--the one that forms near my eyebrow when I’m in deep thought--can probably hold a dime. This face meanders along terra and time until it won’t.

It is now winter. Things have frozen again. Old, black walnut husks are now dark smudges on the ground. The soft, sinister grotesqueries of the soil slumber beneath the frozen surface. Pennsylvania Gray is punctuated with the pale yellow cream of squalls. Winter is red tail lights illuminating in the early darkness. It is deer curling into themselves on the plain earth as it snows. It is turkeys parading past the low boughs of the trees. It is the morse code of the Blue Jay’s talons in the grass. It is putting two Christmas trees up and decorating them with ornaments passed down in reciprocity. It is baking dozens of cookies, building puzzles, cups and cups of tea, and decking all the halls. It is hunkering down with a book. Holding a hand. Wiping flour off a counter. Writing something that makes no sense in a timeline that makes no sense.

Because idiocy abounds.