garbage storing loyalties

How do you ruin a perfectly good pagan holiday? Simple. Invite the Christians. Works every time. With such a guilt ridden lot I’m sure we can all get along very well. Just can’t let anyone else have any fun can we? Because we’re too afraid of fun ourselves.

These past few days I’ve scuttled around to say the least. And when your working a government day job near downtown parliament you haphazardly notice where more and more people tend to congregate. They are the very pleasant and the very familiar in a world overwhelmed with distraction. They are the consumerists collaborate with their thoughts being invaded.

Riding up the escalator for a higher vantage point, a hill for your own safety above all else, you may find yourself reluctant to concentrate on a very familiar stranger travelling down your opposite direction. Maybe someone you had seen before. You awkwardly exchange silent stares, neither of you propelled or hurried. Not in wary, mutual sizing-up; in bewilderment one points out to say “So you’re still dealing with… high school trauma?”

“Maybe.”

And despite your means for escape, the maze continues without exit. You come full circle. As you notice how many reflective surfaces there are in your surroundings. The elevator mirror will have you staring at your reflection in its closed doors. The structural columns are also covered in mirrored glass. Certain stores employ reflective trim around their plate glass windows. Everywhere you go, you get to see what terrible decisions you've made visiting this migraine.

This last Monday, I decided to devour a form of General Tso's chicken—probably the third-lowest tier of the food pyramid. The lowest rung is the fried onion loaf. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the Tao. General Tso must have been the most reviled military leader in the history of China, because if ever there was a "f-you" entrée created by a disgruntled personal chef, it would definitely be General Tso's Chicken. Napoleon lucked out. And General Custer's custard, although not a reliable meal for dinner.

But General Tso's chicken is like a culinary dare disguised as comfort food. Like most things fast food, it's made of all the wrong parts of chicken, each blindly hacked off with a cleaver, and then cleverly concealed inside some kind of glazed doughnut. The worst part is that its deep-frying only creates a perfect outer seal, protecting the bacteria crawling throughout the bizarre interior of poultry and tendon clinging desperately to each other.

What may have summoned that thirst for Fast food, Fast sex, Fast times, Fast anything, is abandoned once you’ve found maggots tale grinding inside and out of your appetite that is literally on the go. You’ll come to understand how flesh-chafed this reality is when it comes to experiencing life on the fast lane. I don’t know about you, but I think we should slow it down a morsel because I’m spent with having my head in a toilet.

On my way back from purchasing my General Tso's Chicken, again I found myself passing about fifteen mirrors and I remembered when I realized that the proliferation of mirrors in shopping malls might have been a secret act of consumer advocacy on the part of mall architects. All of those mirrors primed as mines under pressure to explode, repeating over and over again for emphasis, telling you, "Will you look at yourself? Is this what you really want?” If you’re not in the category of wholly mesmerized narcissists or desensitized to compassionate teachings you may find mirrors saying a lot of these things, then again...well.

As an ex-retail employee, I did the window dressing and engaged clients with “freedom… only for how much you've got?” while notably dressed in a suit with my tie worn around my cranium. My way of saying don’t think I’m any less fortunate than yourself to enjoy this perpetuate hypocritical philosophy specially branded as freedom.

Our ancestors built our land with their calloused hands. They fought off invasions—and it makes you think, for this?! I say drop that fried chicken and just start running. Run for miles from any advertisements or free samples until you hit an undeveloped parcel of land. Enjoy the scenery, maybe even talk yourself out of the flavoured mocha-frappe-chino coffee cravings.

But I guess even that is hard to absorb.