For me, it happen right before work one morning, in the kitchen, when I caught myself in the little mirror over sink, in my underwear. I was calling the cat with a rattling a box of Little Friskies and reading a Times spread flat on the countertop. I saw him in the mirror. So, this is what I’m going to be when I grow up.

People do not mellow with age. One day we finally just admit the truth. There is no slow, comfortable wallow into maturity that you try on like spongy sweaters until you find one you look good in. No. One day you open up the wrong drawer and it flys out with a lighting fist of meat and bone savagely gripping at your windpipe, smashing your face into the carpet and holding it there until you say uncle. The fancy tippy-toe images of your once and future life, swirl into fire breathing demons bellowing a single truth: today, right now, is the future. This is what you’re going to be when you grow up. This is how things turned out.

The little blond haired girl I loved in the front row married the wrong guy, twice, and now she sells real estate; a few years later, another one, a little brown haired girl, broke my heart completely in two. We didn’t get flying cars, O.J. did it, Britney got fat and went nuts. I don’t live in a thatched hut in Polynesia attended by sloe eyed, pastel lipped, beauties of Gaugin, the Red Sox finally won one.

I didn’t get what I expected and I have more than deserve. No mysteries left to solve.

Fraysters know how things turned out too. There’s not much to debate anymore. Only the few die hards living in darkness and denial can muster much conflict.

There were no WMD. Bush is a whack job. Iraq was a hubris infested fantasy. Lance Bass is gay.

China out smarted us. Reality t.v. is here to stay.

The price of gas went exactly where they said it would go. So has the stock market. Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar.

The world is starving, but we’re growing corn to make fuel to drive to jobs that don’t exist any more.

The real esate bubble burst - just like they said it would.

Our prisons are full. Over the top, brimming full. The war on drugs is a joke.

There’s nothing left to debate. Only smoldering trash and nonsense is left. We’re picking over the barren carcass of some pathetic creature dead long ago.

The useless sniping and grousing over right and wrong is over, whether we like it or not. We know the answers, we have seen the future. The world has changed, or rather we are stuck dealing with the future.

This place will evolve into something that it has not been.

Tit for tat will be replaced by give and take. Ideas will be debated on their merit, and right and left will begin to be abandoned at the door. Not because zuko wants it, but because in this place, in the future, there is no other option.

But the desire to tell the imbeciles "I told you so" is ever present. So don't call it a debate. We debate things we don't really know about, like energy options for the nation. But mostly we talk about what we do know about, and we assert. Then we evaluate each others' assertions on style and substance.

the best post that I have seen in many a day. I'm afraid I must agree with Genedio though in his conclusions. I see that I can be forgiven for not commenting because this wasn't here the last time I came around.

Many, many classic lines. You ought to have your own site where adults make up the majority of the traffic.

Of course I realize this new thinking will take a while. But not that long if a new currency is adopted. That being, facts. And there should be a more 'brainstorming' approach, where ideas are not attacked- as long as they are ideas rather than perspective.

In your example of energy, there are hours of expert testimony archived on c-span explaining exactly why the current situatiuon exists. hard facts, Not theory. The world oil market is not about theory, it is a functioning text book of macro-economics. There are six hours of explanations, in detail, and ALL of the witnesses agree on the findamentals.

If we eventual shift to a more fact based dogma here, you will see a change. ANd something more interesting.

z

I believe there are plenty of capable people here. It's just that they have succumed to the right - left thing. The name calling.

I did start to take a look at your link(s), I am on the road and I just don't get enough k's to stream. But your post is a great example. Why not start relying on facts and critical thinking around here.Why do we restrain ourselves with all this side taking?

I stopped debating in HS when I found out girls were much more interesting than even I had previously thought. Sharing ideas is most beneficialest (although the occasional swift thrust to the heart has its merits).

Frankly, zuko, I think you miss the point entirely.

You seem to think that sides are taken here along a spectrum in which "right" and "left" still have meaning.

Are you kidding?

A spectrum that ranges from Bush/McCain to Clinton/Obama?

If the folks pulling George's and John's strings ever revealed themselves as the fascists they are (in the narrow technical sense of "state capitalists" - not in the mud-throwing sense), then, even then nothing would change.

Because guess fucking what - these are the same folks that are pulling Barack's and Hillary's strings.

Now you are stating facts, Good on ya.

Step one. I'll leave it to you what step two may be.

z

Never having cross-posted with you before (that I can remember), I don't know whether I'm being naive in taking your post as non-sarcastic.

If it was meant non-sarcastically, then step 2 is the one I'm trying to take now - working to undo 80-odd years of Palmer Raids, HUAC investigations, McCarran Acts so that legitimate and non-traitorous discouse in the US includes the real right and real left ends of the spectrum (from real overt state capitalismto real overt state socialism or communism.)

If on the other hand your response was meant sarcastically, then look for the toppost I promised ChicagoEngineer on acquisition refrom in military logistics, dysfunctional functionalism a la Talcott Parsons, extraction of signal and noise, and the cynicism of the founding fathers.

I promise you'll see more facts about specialized areas of military logistics than you've ever wanted to know.

There are tit-for-tat people and there are give-and-take people and some people can do both. I'm hoping that the balance shifts. Snarky will never go out of fashion in this place, but the tone will change after Bush is gone.

Liked your writing, this is the first really quotable essay I've read in a long time.

"My life didn't turn out the way I expected."

Not clear to me what you see as the difference between tit for tat and give and take. In any event I question the distinction. I hang around because everything I think is accompanied by the realization that I could be wrong, even though I seldom think I am wrong. When I am wrong, I prefer to be told.

The truths you proclaim may reverse; the give and take you desire may not be what you imagine. For my part, I find a certain beauty to all this babble. Not to say I enjoy it all equally, only that I resist any attempt to close a history book.

My favorite posts are the screeds (yours included).

Except for the part about Britney getting fat and going nuts, your post is total bullshit.

Jack

Clarity, eloquence and knock out punch all in one nice neat stick of literary dyanmite!

That foot went so far up my ass it will take a five foot pry bar and about a day to get it back out.

:)

jo