Drive-By Ranting

There's a hurricane driving by
in an old Hudson Terraplane, screaming
about some future fusion of YouTube, the New World Order,
and something that some people call Utopia
and a state of mind some people call Bliss
and a fear that not enough people are Pissed Off enough
to whistle up a wind of change.

Obama's promising change, but it hasn't added
any loose change in my pockets, and isn't apt to.
Cheney hasn't changed, his eyes still like two
rabid animals in their sockets, gibbering about
terrorists that may be roaming the streets
while he earns money every time something blows up.
The overblown drama that ensares so many of my friends
hasn't changed; they've only added new faces to their rosters,
a roll-call of losers and outcasts in which i'm depicted
and captured as well.
"Money Changes Everything," Lauper hiccups, but
money hasn't changed itself. We sell hours of our time
for less of it every day, and exchange it for even less,
and having it has become a set of shackles
that binds us like Marley's ghost.

Take some pills! See a shrink! Watch TV!
Eat some fucking McFood! Go see a movie
the production costs of which
would easily feed an entire third-world nation
for a year! Set that terrorist alert level on Orange
and watch the voters scurry about
like ants when their anthill's been kicked apart
by some giant kid with a squirt pistol!
Take a picture! Post a film of something stupid
on YouTube! It's YOU! It's TV! The lowest
common denominators of reality
screwing each other into senility
while the pharamceutical companies and
insurance companies do a line-dance
to a tune called "We Are The World,
We Cause the Misery, We Reap the Profits!"
The opiate of the masses is . . . .
EVERYTHING! As long as you've got a lot of it,
it keeps you numb!

If you combine Gas-X and xenoestrogens and
toxic chemicals in our dryer sheets and
whatever brainkiller your psychiatrist prescribes
and toothpaste with flouride
and carbon monoxide
and something to curb your erectile dysfunction,
you get Fully Functional Plastic Poseable
Disposable Consumers, just plug them in
and they'll watch QVC and buy stuff
until their brains rot!

And the ones that don't plug in
are terrorists, paranoid, antisocial,
malcontents . . .
they'll make perfect scapegoats
for all the societal side-effects or,
failing that, Soylent Green.

Labels for this post: scooters, vacations, fall,
Humpty Dumpty, dumpster-diving, free-fall,
downsizing, No Skateboarding Allowed in This Park,
computers, and poop.

P.S.--Go watch CSI, so you can figure out what they're using
to prove that you're guilty, and fuck reasonable doubt,
everybody's guilty.