What the Fuck is Going On?

I have to admit my own adolescent desires have gotten the best of me. I have been avoiding the question for a while because I find Australia the most boring place on earth. Especially Australian Politics, Every time I listen to Scott Morrison’s dry voice I need a hard hit of vodka. The son of a bitch seems completely overwhelmed. The consequences of world history are bearing down on a man who hasn’t even read his lines in the script. He’s bombing out there and everyone knows it. Not least of all himself.

But Unfortunately, the question of what the fuck is going on means that I’ve got to look straight into the screaming abyss. I am compelled to it now. For better or worse. God help me.

The virus completely blindsided all of us. Even if you’re a prepper, the gentle existential breeze of our consumer lives of comfort made us blissfully unaware of our own gory history.

When I first heard of the virus, it was around four months ago. I was watching videos of Wuhan’s pandemonium on the screen of my easy-going work colleague’s phone. A clip that stuck out to me most featured several men in white PPE gear, walking down a street with handguns. Hard cut to the sound of gunshots & chaos in the streets, dead people scattered sparsely around the cameraman. (This is where I need to digress to express the first element of why the question of what the fuck is going on is so hard to answer).

While I watched the video, I was conflicted. It didn’t seem real, why would authorities be brazenly shooting people in the street, yet allowing some lucky bastard to film the entire thing? China has usually been pretty good at keeping the ball close to the chest. But at the same time filming a hoax as elaborate as this fifty-second clip would be an incredible feat of film making. A million-dollar production at least.

But the reality is that I did doubt, and this was my first mistake. The first time that I could have done something other than I did. Which was go about my day, lifting road cases from one truck to another. I was tired of trying to work out what was real and what wasn’t. I genuinely didn’t know anymore.

I had intuitions. I knew the media was a tacky bad acid trip of corrupt celebrities haplessly sucking the teet of the fat money dispensing cow of the Murdoch media machine. Fueling the drug war with overpriced cocaine imported by brutal South American Cartels. So I never watched Australian TV, read Australian newspapers, listened to Australian radio shows, or cared about what the broad Australian culture spent their time doing.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.” – Hunter S Thompson

I don’t want to get bogged down into a deposition of individual ideological crimes. This is about something more ethereal.

The other day I was driving through some quiet suburban streets near my home & saw a man in tradie attire leant on his car clutching a parking ticket in his hand. I felt his soul crying out to God almighty. So parking rangers are still working. I guess they are essential after all, how else would they be able to pay themselves for “working.”

This is the strange obsceneness of this time. A man that is obligated by the dire straights of his own existence, to rob his fellow citizens for a cut of the price. While near empty highway’s collect tree branches.

I think the most insulting part of all of this, is the insanely ill willed stimulus package the government prepared. For “businesses” to stay afloat. This is madness. There is no way to avoid a total restructuring of the economy as we know it.

How long until airports are needed for mass comercial travel again? 90 days? Can Australia grow and distribute its own food supply within it’s own landmass? Nobody is thinking about these questions in my bubble. It’s easier to just stay inside and wish it all gets better on it’s own. Time to break open some Hendrick’s and OJ.