Dear Mudge,
I hope your holiday unfolded in a way that left you both nutritionally as well as spiritually nourished.
My wife and I drove to Corvallis, Wednesday, to pick up our son who has lived there for the last two years, post-graduation, to be with his honey. He’s struggling, economically, not being able to find employment that befits his degree. Our daughter and her beau arrived for T-Day festivities and the five of us (mostly me) proceeded to consume too much food ending with a creation of my daughter, a chocolate/Nutella pecan pie, the last of which I devoured just this morning.
Overall, a lot of cooking work for too short a gathering and too many left-overs. It was nice to see and chat with my son. We discussed the Absurd Universe and how it’s a theme he’s loosely explored through his Instagram account. I have to hand it to him on that regard; he’s dedicatedly posted daily for a few years now, growing his follower count to over 100k. Due to this, he’s now managing another account with 1m+ followers. Imagine having the temporary eyes and minds of a million people. What havoc could you wreak?
I broached that topic with him and expectantly, he admitted that he’d considered it. Lost sleep over it in fact.
I offered that were he to have a secret agenda, subtly must prevail. But what kind of agenda? We discussed the fact that all million-plus accounts, on all platforms, are no doubt targets for corporate and political influence. He’s just 26 now, so, though exposed to my overt biases, he’s yet to dream up his own evil plans. The venue now exists, however. We’ll see.
I wonder, given the opportunity, what agenda might you suggest? Kindness seems like a more hands-on incentive, one that would get lost or derided in the message. My son uses humor to success in his message delivery. Could we find some means to express humorous kindness? Could that even work? Satirical kindness feels like an oxymoron.
December is here. The month of guilt and giving-envy. I’m trying to bring back Saturnalia and other pagan traditions. On the trip down to get my son I spied loads of green nodule-nests in large oak trees—mistletoe. Only the pagans would celebrate Freya’s fetish for kissing beneath a parasitic plant. I love it!
Best,
‘Mole
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
Off topic, as usual. I got my drivers license today in the last year of the sixties. And a camaro of the same year. I missed all the Haight Ashbury thing that the 20 somethings were doing while I waited for puberty, but I was there for “Wimmen’s lib” as an avant-garde electronic musician/arteest through the 70s, before sex would kill you. And waterbeds on the floor beat fucked up stoned sex in the mud all to hell, trust me.
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Saturnalia, we hardly knew ya. What happened to the good ol’ days of debauchery and unbridled fun? I was born just a wee bit too late to enjoy the last, great era of that stuff. But maybe that’s for the best. Just for calendar-keeping, though, when would the generation theory guys say the next sexual revolution is supposed to begin? Asking for a friend…
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If there is such a revolution coming, and it expands on the 60’s theme, sign me up.
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Strauss and Howe say that everything is cyclical, so what came around will come around again. According to the theory we are most likely in the midst of the “Crisis” phase of the saeculum, which will be followed by the “High,” akin to post WWII and 50’s life. Of course, after that we’ll get back to the “Awakening” and the time we’ve been waiting for.
Of course, by then, I’m likely to be in my 70s or even 80s. Let’s hope medical science keeps advancing so that our 80s can be like the 60s was to folks in their 20s. 😁
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“Saeculum” — had to look that one up. Good word.
And, re: medical science/longevity, a topic I explored in that recent apocalyptic scenario. The Chinese are pushing boundaries.
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Good. We need to push that boundary. If you haven’t read Strauss and Howe, you should! Great stuff. Even Steve Bannon thinks so. 😉
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And that bit about mistletoe. Who cares where it came from? It got me a few undeserved but enjoyable youthful liplocks. Hell, I took a sprig to school with me. Only got slapped once, if I remember correctly.
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Kindness is one of those things where no leading adjective or adverbial quality works. Kindness is another one of those “just is” things. You open a door for an old lady whith hair like a copper brillo pad who walks like Frankenstein because the box she is carrying is bigger than she is. Is there humor in seeing her, but reacting instinctively to assist? Yes. What a character! Do you let the door drop on the asshole who cut you off in the parking lot carrying his larger than life box? No. Kindness, according to Mother (Saint) Theresa is what you do for someone else when you’re out of gas because you have to. Because the bottom line is we’re here to fart around and heal each other and anything else is a cultural contrivance. Society and all its ills are pain, and we are the only ones who may ease it for one another. Kindness is not learned, it is buried in us like the wolf in an Irish Setter. Kindness just is. However 1 million people following anything on twitter from a pope to a president to a celebutante’s shopping spree is sheer insanity. Sheeple unite!
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Don’t worry, most of the holydays are. I mean, a greek priest pulled by a bunch of raindeers, without even a cross? Or a bunny laying eggs because Jesus wad crusified? C’mon… 😃
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Your son’s a social media star and any corporation would hire him to manage their brand!! A million eyeballs…send him to the Kardashians!
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