Groping for the Zeitgeist

I see that today is the last day of January 2014. Have I gotten with the program? I can't say. I have dated no checks January 2013 by mistake. I look out the frost-covered windows at the snowy yard and say, yes, it's winter. So to that extent I'm properly oriented. I open the morning paper and see the latest political scandals and say, yes, that figures, that agrees with my worldview, particularly after three days of bingeing on old seasons of The Good Wife. So you could say that I sort of know what's going on.

Of course I know what's going on. I'm on Facebook, for heaven's sake. Are the puppies and kittens not still cute? Are the politicians not still making themselves ridiculous? Are my friends' books not still getting regularly published, to the joy of readers everywhere? Are the celebrities not enraging doctors with their weird diets and home-made facelifts?

And yet. As I fold up the paper, gulp down the last of my second cup of coffee, and close the window on Facebook, as I boot Word and gaze at the blank screen, I find that I have nothing to write.

Part of the problem is that I never really got over the bronchitis of last month. I still can't breathe well enough to go back to the church choir. Either from a general feeling of unfitness or as a result of the drugs I'm taking I feel detached from reality. Nothing compels my attention. I should finish Bucker Dudley, so that the three people who read the first chapters might know how it ends, but somehow I've become too balled up in the disastrous Niagara campaign to move forward (almost like General Wilkinson himself, may he rot, the bounder.)

Here's an idea. I might pick a fight with somebody. Wilkinson, that reprehensible scoundrel, is dead, as are all his legitimate heirs, if any, so he won't be fighting with me any time soon. But Congressman Michael Grimm. Most likely I would be safe from his most aggressive impulses, since there's no balcony here for him to throw me off of, and even he can figure out that breaking an old lady in two would reflect no particular credit on him. The famous tape where he threatens the newsman has subtitles, in case you can't hear what he's saying. Why not substitute other subtitles, the way people do in the famous Hitler video? I could have a lot of fun with that, work up enough energy to get back to my writing.

It might even go viral, engage the Hive Mind. I could get with the zeitgeist. Here goes.

(Later.) I have been somehow stripped of my powers. None of my video software is working, not on the Mac, not on the PC. See, this is the sort of thing I'm complaining about, or trying not to complain about. One by one the systems fail. Anyway here's the original video, in the unlikely event that you missed it. The reporter tries to ask Congressman Grimm in a perfectly mild-mannered way what was up with his campaign finance scandal and the Congressman offers to kill him. Big tough marine. Boo-yah. I'm going to have to ask you to imagine the new subtitles, where Grimm asserts that he's wearing his big boy pants now and offers to show the reporter that he has Batman on his bottom. Because I'm not able right now to edit this &%$#! video.

© 2014 Kate Gallison