I’ve been feeling it again, lately. Be gone, all you email messages and solicitations from all media vomitoria. I’m just some crusty old sigh of compassion fatigue and boredom–at least when I’m overwhelmed.
When the merchandizing tumble of America crowds in on my windshield and all I can hear is “me…me….me…” from every shelf, story and article–who gives a fuck? I must say this 20 times each day, easily. It’s become a chant. I start up the old radio around 3 am, hoping the soothing voices will lure me back to sleep. They’re not as soothing as they used to be. It’s a much brassier, perkier world out there. Still, I’m usually good until 7 when the voices start breaking through to me. Eventually a story will drag me out of bed to turn up the volume. I’m engaged. But, by the time I crawl to the kitchen and begin my caffeination rituals, I’ve lost that nugget and the refrain begins. Who gives a fuck?
Who gives a fuck that we’ve broken open some nest of lies in some administrative office? Who’s still surprised by that? Whose people did we think these were? Just more “me…me…me…me…me…me…me.”
The wars we’ve slid beneath, blowing the brains and limbs of children to bits, grateful and ashamed that these are “volunteers,” serve their own peculiar “Who gives a fuck” special. “Madmoiselle, our special tonight is topped by a heaping pile of cold blooded disgust at the cynical drivers of the manipulation machine. Oh no Madmoiselle?” (sniff) c’est dommage… Who gives a fuck? Even on the rare occasions the political posturing makes sense, it requires a certain je ne sais…who gives a fuck, to clear the slime from my throat.
And then, I have mail: newsletters from organizations with no news—Who gives a fuck? Insurance products I don’t want—Who gives a fuck? Fundraising from organizations I believe in—who are wasting my last contribution soliciting more money; even the magazines I subscribe to: WHO GIVES A FUCK?
Do I have a bad attitude? Does this happen to you? Maybe it’s the 24/7 world. I’m already behind before I get up. What’s the point? I’m exhausted. Who gives a fuck?
Or is it déjà vu all over again? The same political fight over and over, third-world invasions based on lies, it’s all too familiar—and I’m tired-er.
And where’s the white knight? Mr. Clean, maybe? or even Mr. Ti-Dee-Bowl valiently canoeing in my euphemism? No one looks too good. On the one side we’ve got zombies—no fingerprints, no plans and no positions—just perpetual campaigns. On the other side we’ve got fingerprints everywhere, especially on our bedroom walls and bathroom stalls. I feel out-monied, out power-pointed, out Godded. The problems are too complex and the answers are too simple. So who gives a fuck?
And then when I turn on the radio and TV for a little distraction I hit the rotation of the self-important monotones and their scripted spontaneity hawking books exposing the perfectly obvious. Who gives a fuck… Maybe, if I could reign in the things I don’t give a fuck about, I could care more about the things that matter to me.