Does Distress Make Me Look Fat?

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.  Originated in 1923 by an air-traffic controller in London, that now-familiar term is used internationally as a distress call in radio communications.  From the French venez m'aider ("come help me"), it's always, like Beetlejuice, repeated 3 times, to ensure that the listener knows it's an actual distress call and not a message about a distress call, or some mistaken radio chatter.

I've been talking recently with a few people, mostly Alice B. Fogel (alicebfogel.com, in the shameless shilling department, which probably should have been Curt's nickname although it's spelled differently) about writing these posts and about their content and about how to get through the world.  You know, light, casual stuff just thrown over the shoulder as you walk out the door in the morning.  Turns out I mostly can't help writing about topical stuff, about the state of the world, about "What's goin' on"-- although much of me wishes I could just let it all roll off, and only pay attention to the daily business of living my life, which has plenty of its own stresses, along with, fortunately, great measures of joy.

But there is so much to be distressed about these days, as I've said before and as we all know too well, and a lot of it's stuff I've already written about, still there and getting worse.  There's the number of shootings in our area since the first of the year, which have skyrocketed almost beyond belief.  There's the anger, hatred and racism rampant and maybe on the rise in the US.  Ted Nugent recently, as I'm sure you know, said President Obama was like a "coyote who needed to be shot" (all coyotes do, apparently), and that, if the President is re-elected he--Nugent--"will either be dead or in jail at this time next year."  Apparently this remark is so egregious that even the Secret Service was roused from its drug-and-prostitute-fueled stupor to look into it.  Even if, as is likely, I suppose, he's just being his usual blowhard wackjob outrageous adolescent attention-craving asshole self and doesn't, in fact, intend to shoot Obama, how many John Hinckley/Mark Chapman types are there out there who would find their own like-minded beliefs validated by such dangerous words?  If not a boast of his own plans, it's at least an implicit call to action for a nation of heavily-armed and frightened white guys.

We have lost all touch with civility in public discourse and any sense of propriety in this country, it seems.  In Walpole, NH, for instance, there lives a retired cop--a representative of government and order-- from NYC who, while driving a car with an American flag fluttering in the wind as he goes to buy his lottery tickets, wears Tshirts and posts signs in his yard saying "Obama Sucks." "Protect and Serve," indeed.  I'm not at all patriotic (see Vonnegut, "granfalloon"), but Jesus, that's the POTUS, not some third baseman or point guard who plays for a team you hate.  How have we gotten here?

Then there's the whole issue of privacy in this country.  We willingly give it up by having computers (hello!) and cellphones and facebooks and blogs (hello!), and there are cameras everywhere now, but the whole drone thing scares me to death.  It's here already and it's gonna be overwhelming and entrenched soon.  Before too long the skies are going to be filled with unmanned spycraft we won't be able to see.  Like some ugly mid-20th century nightmare science fiction, our every move is going to be watched and catalogued by someone.  How the hell have we gotten there?  More importantly, how do we get out of this mess we have put ourselves in, and continue to do?  Like the proverbial frog in the pot of cold water, the heat is being turned up slowly enough that we don't notice that we're  getting close to the boiling point, at which time we're cooked.

So this week on the radio, a smorgasbord, a sampler of issues and ills and ideas:  some "Mayday" (or month) songs, since the show is on May 1, some songs of anger and hatred, of spying and watching.  As JT has it, "I can't help it if I don't feel so good." Those of you who can help it: mazel-tov.  Hope you can join me on Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern at 100.1 FM, or at wool.fm on the Gore-o-phone.

By the way, the correct response to the age-old question that prompted this post's title is always, of course, "Honey, you look fabulous in everything and in nothing."  Isn't it?