It’s a Dog Eat Dog World and I’m Wearing Milkbone Underwear

It’s midnight and I’m awake enough to know high pulse rates and mental hyperactivity are not conducive to a good night’s rest.

A friend of mine rescues dogs from the streets and from the kennels.  She is totally averse to housing anything in a cage – says its inhumane and devolution but she pronounces it devilution which I think is much cooler.  We got to talking about prison and how we take people who do not agree to live by the civilized world’s rules, and place them in prison as if they were animals, as if they have either devolved from their human state, or never evolved into one.  The thing is, prison is very much a social darwinistic existence, survival of the fittest leapfrogging to the head of the class when discussing golden rules.  So when these folks get back into the world, they are so re-enforced with the Darwinistic way of life that the idea of becoming civilized again seems pretty far-fetched.  See recidivist rates as evidence.

So, what’s different about the dogs?  They spend days or weeks locked up in these kennels and then tail wag and tongue flop out to their new owners to embrace their newfound freedom and second chance at life.  By comparison, dog recidivist rates are pretty low.

Maybe it’s humanity’s conscious thought that’s the problem.  Or maybe we are just blessed with an odious nature that overwhelms our desire to be good.  Or maybe, and this is something to really try to get your head around, maybe the whole “civilized” world is the problem.  We are, after all, just animals, right?  What if this entire social construct, with a moral foundation and agreed upon rules, is just antithetical to the animalistic existence?  Maybe we should stop implementing rules and just let people be.  Maybe if crime weren’t such an act of rebellion, people would stop committing them.  From day one, we are taught the system of reward/punishment.  It’s very Pavlovian.  Which brings me back to the dogs.

I don’t like the idea of things in cages.  Restraints upon freedom tend to excite negative energy.  Let’s open up the doors for a while and see what happens.  We might find ourselves getting our faces licked in a way that makes us smile.

The Descent of Voyeurism

Have you ever really watched the people in the crowd?  Oh, I know we’re all optimistic voyeurs in our own warped ways, hoping for someone to face-plant or dribble ice cream or catfight over something catfightable.  But I’m referring to actually studying the way people interact – the escalating tones of someone whose excitement at the telling of a story has a tennis-shot’s squeal about it, the awkward distance people assume when confiding in one another, the graceless gestures we use to accentuate something.  Truly, we are animals and the observational possibilities are pretty staggering.

 Yesterday I was sitting poolside, surrounded by a hundred Hollywood hulks and hulkesses whose idea of swimwear lay somewhere between Fred Flintstone and Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase.  As I reclined, I saw swollen biceps support strawed-drinks with the sort of effort an Olympic weightlifter might give in the gold medal round.  With the absence of tan lines, post-implant females ran slender fingers up bronzed bodies and pushed red tongues through collagened lips.   The mating ritual’s posturing wouldn’t stop.  Grown woman tossed back hair with an I’m-Stevie-Wonder-singing sort of epileptic flip while the males slipped a waist-high hand onto a mates bikini line and leaned in for a whisper. 

 Perhaps the arena called for these actions – Hollywood home of the sexually adventurous and overbearingly crass – however, all subtlety and nuance were lost.  Maybe I’m just getting old.  Maybe this is the next generations salvo in the war towards pro-creation.  Then again, maybe voyeurism is the perfect means to observe critique and learn how the world works.  Whatever is happening, I’ve got my pen in my hand….