This piece will be a bit different from my usual style. It will be written in the Gonzo Journalism way. Not a Muppet, it is simply a style of news that is subjective to the first-person experience of the author in the story and a bit exaggerated. I hope it will convey the general atmosphere surrounding the current year, 2020, bombarded by news stories with no tools to deal with the growing problems.
Writing the apocalypse seems fun, but depression sits after the initial joy of pitching it.
For one thing, there were the two storms, Hurricanes Marco and Laura, that seemed to draw closer to the path of homes, according to the National Hurricane Center and the City of Huntsville. Jacob Blake is shot and paralyzed by police on Sunday, Aug. 23, adding more fuel to the raging fire of protests and riots happening across the country.
Still, despite the danger, I did my routines, with a lot of dark ambient horror music playing louder each day. Each day has also been spent in my bedroom as is normal for us now.
I tried reading some philosophy, hoping for some answers, but it left me feeling more mentally exhausted than enlightened.
Tuesday came to pass: DMV, set up a therapy session, Marco weakens according to the NHC, the Republican National Convention is in full effect.
Marco is a wet fart. Laura is stronger though, coming right near us. This is still enough for Sam Houston State University to close down the school. SHSU can keep its rec centers and classes open during a pandemic, but a hurricane about 120 miles inland, according to distance-cities.com, that is when you shut down.
I am super distracted Wednesday, though things get done. I take my first nap in six months, still as eternally tired afterwards.
Time magazine is a reportedly serious news organization of a sort, far more established than I ever feel I will be. I read through it’s harmless prose until I get to an article about U.S. Rep. Katie Porter. Glowing with praise for the remarkable feat of looking up facts and asking hard questions, it describes the method as “wonky.”
Wonky. Oh, what a word. What a way to introduce a biased word, either endearing or damaging to the subject in an article that is supposed to be taken seriously. What a way to build public trust that journalists are not biased hacks outside of opinion sections. What a way to make me quit my subscription.
Thursday.
The sun is shining brighter than I knew before a hint of the storm, but I am transfixed by Twitter. There is so much going on. On the one hand, a wannabe cop of a teenager, Kyle Rittenhouse, kills two protesters, injuring one more, according to The Washington Post and MSN. Rittenhouse is taken alive; Jacob Blake is handcuffed while paralyzed, according to the Chicago Tribune.
With such a rage inducing event, one would think that the avatar of internet justice, Twitter users, would be able to assign different punishments for a mistake made by a well-intentioned ally from someone who would support Rittenhouse’s acts.
There is a heaping of abuse towards nonbinary creator Noelle Stevenson, who shared an ill-thought out, according to Newsweek, inside joke by a storyboard artist on a livestream. The joke was based on a Black character named Bow on their show, with siblings whose names are puns on Bow. The offending name was a sibling who is a farmer named Sow, who “tills the fields,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson later made an apology on Twitter.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson chimed in on the events of the week, asking, “So are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
He has made no apology.
Though Carlson gets a unique hashtag (#FireTuckerCarlson), according to MarketWatch, it is more expected of him to be a monster, so the magnitude does not matter because he fits his role in this system. I suspect Stevenson, though her career will be probably be fine, will be a pariah for a while longer than Carlson in professional and political circles.
A mass of approving unmasked faces surrounded their leader at the RNC, according to the New York Times. My father’s leader. Inescapably, my current leader.
I do not give much thought to the blank suit running against him, a rotting carcass that has “not Trump” stamped on his head.
Power goes out and so do I. Out to do my work and out of my mind in the heat of my air-conditioned car, seeing an invisible apocalypse in all the dimmed lights from the brownouts courtesy of Hurricane Laura.
I check my Twitter feed one more time. There are two more storms stirring, according to the NHC. I am too hot and tired to care, and I welcome the storm if it means getting out of this relentless, violent stagnation. At least there will be rain.
