Hold off on the video until the end, OK?
It would be nice to catch a break once in awhile. It’s hard to depress me, but it’s been a hell of a couple of weeks. Yes, I get angry and worked up at times, and it motivates me to act. But that is different than a confluence of events which re-open a chasm of grief and loss that send me into a cycle of depression, despair, and resignation. And there has been a fair amount of that recently.
Between the evil cretins in charge of the government response to covid destroying my financial and business life for the last two years; ballooning car repairs; an evil bureaucracy hell-bent on approving the kill shots for babies; widespread Big Pharma and Big Ag poisoning; rising poverty; stagflation; looming digital dystopia; gender, race, resource, and land wars; the rise of superstition, witch hunts, and dogma; the deaths of relatives, a husband, and learning of the death of an old sweetheart this past week… I can’t help but notice that it’s beginning to feel like the “O’Connell Curse” around here.
If you’re on the “other side” of the debate (even though the idea of “two sides” is oversimplified), the current horrors are covid, monkeypox, Russia, systemic racism, transphobia, gun violence, and climate change.
Pick your outrage/fear porn. Plenty to choose from depending upon your beliefs. It is an insane time.
The O’Connell Curse. It’s a metaphor for our times. Allow me to explain.
Did anyone ever watch Northern Exposure? Beautiful TV show, and possibly my favorite of all time. For those who never did, it was set in Alaska (but filmed in the PNW). It was an early 90s TV series exploring various intellectual and social themes well before their time.
But the general overall theme was simply zany, character-driven, benevolent absurdity in a small rural Alaskan town.
Two main characters are Maggie O’Connell — bush pilot and jack of all trades from Michigan — and Joel Fleischman, an outspoken Jewish doctor from New York.
Joel and Maggie have a love/hate relationship with plenty of sexual tension. All six of Maggie’s past boyfriends died at a relatively young age in strange accidents, the implication being that if Joel were to date Maggie, he too would be doomed to an early death.
And the entire town knows it.
#1 Steve got hit by lightning while photographing an oil rig.
#2 Harry ate bad potato salad.
#3 Bruce had a fishing accident.
#4 Glen took a wrong turn onto a missile test range.
#5 Dave took a nap on a glacier while writing a book, and froze to death.
#6 Rick was hit by a falling satellite.
The residents of the small Alaskan town referred to Maggie O’Connell’s problem as the “O’Connell Curse.” This Season 2 Episode 7 Slow Dance becomes even more funny when men start making passes at Maggie because they’d be happy with “two good weeks” before they die. Or when housewives in the town, sick of their husbands, try to set them up on dates with Maggie.
Well, it’s beginning to feel like the O’Connell curse around these parts.
Granted, if we’re speaking strictly literally, for me it’s only been two men. The vast majority of my past beaus are still alive. heh heh. Still.
And sure, there’s a bit of self-pity going on here, but the salient point is actually that we can apply this broad emotional milieu to the entire world right now.
It’s a world where it seems that even the people on “our” side are resigned to the loss of reason and science, marinating in a stew of bad news, and giving in to relentless doom mongering and resignation. We will live in a pod. We will eat the bugs. We will own nothing. And nothing can stop it.
Eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow, we die.
Or, alternatively, enter Howard Beale. First you’ve got to get mad. I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!
But neither of these approaches changes anything.
Of the 100 or so Substacks I follow, it’s overwhelming and relentless fear/outrage porn, bad news, and dark prognostications… is it reality or a reverse “mass formation” that is giving our side points on which to fixate our own anxieties?
I think it is real. Things are bad, worse than bad, as Howard says. But the endless pileup of facts and hysteria about the facts increasingly get us nowhere.
I’m certainly not immune to it, either. I’ve done more than my fair share of doom mongering. In fact, I’m fond of telling people that I talk myself up for the apocalypse so that when that doesn’t happen, I’m pleasantly surprised.
But rather than the next “this just in!” on vaccine injury or inflation, I’d almost rather read the 1,546th tedious take on why vaccines or masks don’t work.
Almost.
There’s literally not enough time in the day to read all of that. This isn’t meant as an admonishment.
It’s just that I can’t help this weary, wistful, and hopeful longing for what now feels like a far too fleeting past benevolence to be brought into the present. To go back to the future. Many of us long for a simpler and better time. For some that was the 50s-70s. For me it was the 80s and 90s, even the early 2000s weren’t bad.
So the question is:
Where the hell is Joel Fleischman when you need him?
Because we could all use a dance with that guy.
This is a positive and life-affirming video clip from 30 or so years ago. Watch it now. You won't be disappointed.
Paging Dr. Joel Fleischman