Give Me Fire

The air outside has a slight chill to it.  No trace of a breeze.  The sky is just starting to brighten.  It's about 5:17 in the morning.  Friday.  I'm outside taking in the silence, coffee cup in hand.  I haven't turned on the cell phone or the computer.  I haven't done any of my usual morning rituals other than the coffee.  I'm just taking in the silence, thinking of how I would so very much like to live in a world without the sounds of cars, planes and people whining about Obama or how excited they are to see Green Lantern.

A truck goes by on its way to Safeway.  I hear this truck almost every day.  The illusion is destroyed.  Time to go inside and take a shower, boot up Pinhead and my cell and try to get some writing done before I go to my job.  I encounter an e-mail from a female friend telling me she likes when I run pictures of women with weapons.  Here's a throat-slitting one for you, from The Road Warrior, a great film that has yet to be matched in pure spectacle.

A line from the e-mail catches my eye.  "You're always fun to read when you write something when you're angry."  It's an awkward sentence at best, but I get the meaning behind it.  I've been told that before.  Anger inspires greatness, I guess.  Give me fire, right?

There's plenty to be angry about these days.  Politicians who make better speed bumps than legislators.  A capitalistic world that seems dangerously ignorant of the path it is taking when it comes to the environment.  Libya.  The attacks on unions.  The debt ceiling.  People who claim every earthquake is yet another sign that 2012 is real.  The list goes on and on.

I've been fairly silent on most of these things lately.  It's not that I don't care about them.  I do.  I just have this "sit back and wait" attitude because I get this funny feeling that some of this shit is going to bite people in the ass, and that actually cracks me up a bit.  (In all fairness, I have been encouraging people who believe in 2012 to give up their jobs and possessions.  I figure if they fall for prophecies they'll fall for anything and why not speed up their extinction.)  I do take some perverse pleasure in people being made to pay for their follies.  Schadenfreude.  Beautiful word from a beautiful language.

I'm sure the anger will return, and knowing me it'll be back in no time flat.  Today, though, I don't have the energy for it.  Lack of sleep and some nasty allergies have taken the piss out of me.  Bitterness and sarcasm, my allies, will be back in full force in the very near future.  Until they return, however, I'll be satisfied by mere observation.