For Some Reason

It seemed like a fine time to repost this.

From me, April, 2005:

Resistance Is Futile.

Lay down and die now and beat the holiday rush.

You know these people and their Sad Bastard song. 

They periodically break out all over the Progressive side of the internet’s like a rash, bleating their plaintive mating call: “When in danger, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”

The tuneless, hypnotic gray hymn sung by Little Gray Men.

Surely some are Nader or Green or LaRouchie delusions, or Marx’s last True Believers who only want five minutes of your time, and “Here’s one of our Pamphlets”, and then always pitch some variant of this this tangy proposal to all and sundry: “Dude, give up on the NBA. They are so over. Come join our Orienteering and Lawn Dart party. Sure we only have 11 members, but with your people we'd have like, forty million...and eleven! Which would rock!”

But as to the rest…what are they?

Perhaps their own native land has been overrun by fools and monsters and dark magi? Perhaps for a long time they helped feed the beast that laid waste to their homeland, and now they are alone on the road, abandoned or exiled? Angling to get back in good with the Gorgons by taking to the road and bleeding a little “friendly” poison in to the evil Progressives? We’re not exactly sure.

Men who for some seemingly inexplicable reason are so deeply invested in spreading the gospel of hopelessness and despair that they will literarily go long miles on a dark night way out of their way to find a little bungalow with a cheery fire and friends gathered ‘round.

We do know that through the window they see the flickering hearth, comically small against the huge icy night. They kick in the door, pee in the fire and begin their little paean to nihilism (done here in a nice, visually chiasmic, artsy kinda way):

Sleep,

Sleeeeep.

Surrender.

Surrrrendeeeer.

Resistance is Futile.

Open the window and jump.

Please lay down in front of the horses.

The devil’s coming and he cannot be stopped.

You are a limp pile of nothing in a hostile Universe.

“Cry ‘Fuck It’ and let slip the Dogs of Nothing.

The gargoyles have taken the cathedral.

You are fucking dooooomed.

Here, use my gun.

Hope is dead.

Surrrrendeeeer.

Surrender.

Sleeeeep.

Sleep.

And then they leave, these Gray Men, bearing their little contagion. Their sad song doesn't really affect me because I know better, so I can’t help but look past the tune and begin to seriously wonder about their motives. After all, All Is Lost, right? Entropy Is Maximized. Were got a good table at Milliways and The Heat Death of the Universe is scheduled to happen momentarily.

All Effort is useless…and yet these Gray Men are so intense, so almost-hysterically focused, so tireless: they expend an inordinate amount of eloquence and effort trying so very very very hard to convince us all they we are well and truly fucked.

I mean, if they’re looking for something to do, they could make a yummy sandwich, or kick a kitten. I’m sure there’s a “Who’s The Boss” marathon playing somewhere. Issues of “Archie ‘n Jughead” sit unread next to an up-opened copy of Jacques Derrida's “Deconstructing Archie ‘n Jughead For Dummies” . Or the Junior Jumble is always fun. Or what about those crazy Lockhorns, eh? I mean, how does this eternally drunk, dessicated middle-manager manage to score with so many fine cartoon babes anyway? And while his wife is Right There, offering her bored, prole-adapted “Who Is Afraid of Virginia Wolfe” asides?

And how about making yet another yummy sammich?

Or just jerk off into a pickle jar again.

Point is, even the most lard-based life forms can find something to fill their empty hours, so what’s up with these Ennui U. Cheerleaders? Does anyone else find that odd?

Does anyone else notice that they are just waaaay too keenly interested in counseling you to put the revolver in your mouth?

I get that expending copious amounts of energy to tirelessly heralding the cause of existential uselessness and despair is a viable and time-honored getting-laid strategy ("I don't think I should be alone tonight...") at many of America's fine institutions of higher learning. Beyond that, I don't get it.