Thursday, August 11, 2011

Button-Pusher

"Where do you work?" "What do you do for a living?"

The answer is always more complex, more important, more interesting than the reality of the situation. Local news station. Computer graphics operator for the news shows. I try to dumb it down by saying that I'm just a button-pusher. That's what I do. I push buttons. This is easier than explaining exactly what my job entails.

It always feels like there's pressure to buff up my social status when I answer this question. What you do to make money is a part of your identity. It defines who you are as a person. Just like your choice in couch and matching love seat, the car that you drive, the clothes that you happened to wear that day, the way you style the hair on your head, how you paint your face, if you have the updated iPhone 4 or a flip phone from six years ago...

"Ooh, you work in the news? That must be exciting!"

I watch people die every day. I listen to the stories about political and religious fundamentalists gagging the airwaves with their trite comments on how things "should" be. I air updated photos and information about child molesters. I see the most depraved individuals running away and getting caught. I help report the latest death tolls from tragic incidents as mere numbers on a screen, but give a face to the most recent celebrity gossip. I see when a man and his son go missing on their fishing trip, the search and rescue team briefly seek out their bodies, and then end with a shrug, figuring that the bodies will turn up at some point. I see when a police officer or trooper or soldier go missing on their fishing trips, the search and rescue team ceaselessly combs the region until they are found, deploying every search team and vehicle imaginable.

No, not exciting. I just push buttons.

I'm a button-pusher.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Guts (Or the lack thereof)

            I’m tired. And I’m angry.
            And I’m tired.
            I stamp out the cigarette under my foot. It smolders for its last breath. Its black guts spilled out. I watch as it takes its last breath and the smoke dissolves into the humid breeze. I feel nothing for it.
            I watched a woman get swept away by raging flood waters on the TV. I watched while she screamed for the last time. I watched as she thought her last thoughts before her lungs filled with water. A man stood by and recorded her death.
            That water couldn’t have been very clean.
            I watched a man get beaten to death on the internet. I watched as men in black uniforms decorated with gold badges kicked him. I watched as he convulsed from the electric currents pumped into his flailing body. I watched as he screamed for the last time. I watched as he called out for his father before his lungs filled with his own blood and his face swelled. A man stood by and recorded his death.
            His hospital bills must have been expensive before succumbing to the injuries.
            I’m tired.
            And I’m angry.
            I’m mostly just tired, though.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Limbo.


                Five in the morning and already the air smothers me. Sun peaks beyond the cloudless horizon and the sky is in that weird transition between night and a new day. Not blue. Not black. Not anything, really.
                I look up. Dried leaves rustle in the light breeze. I can see the translucent dawn between the bug-eaten holes of leaves baked in summer sun. They sway to a tune I cannot hear, to a rhythm I cannot groove to. A friend falls now and again to its concrete doom.
                How is it this hot already?
                I can’t help but feel like there’s some secret I’m missing out on. When the birds chirp, the wind rustles the leaves, the cicadas screech, I feel out of the conversation. I’m sitting in the middle of dozens of people, all talking about the same thing, and I’m completely out of the loop. They don’t include me in this conversation.
                So I sit and listen. I strain to focus on the main theme.
                Lives consumed by the three “f’s”. Every chirp, rustle, screech, and death of a leaf are directly linked to one of the three “f’s.”
                Fighting.
                Food.
                Fucking.
                The former greatly influencing and affecting the latter.
                It probably wouldn’t feel so hot if it weren’t so damn humid.
                There’s got to be more to it than this. Is there a deeper meaning? A code that needs decrypting? A secret buried beneath the obvious? Maybe even a practical joke?
                Five in the morning and already the air smothers me. The sky’s in that weird transition. Not blue. Not black.
                Not anything, really.