Getting My Malarky Back

I’ve been informed by perspicacious allies that I’m in danger of becoming a Facebook “Funkmeister”, a veritable “Eyore” of “What’s on Your Mind” mechanics. The reason is rather simple: over the course of the winter, following the re-election of Barack Obama I have become a gloomy gus. This would be alright, save that like everybody on Facebook I assume my state of mind has utility. So, for instance, as the social safety net for people with disabilities and the elderly is taken apart by beltway bandits I hit the send button, letting loose my dark experctorations. 

 

The sad thing is I used to be funny. Even when I became an academic I was funny. I once told a room full of dolorous college administrators that I had to leave the meeting right away, because, I said, “I forgot about the bees!” and I ran from the room in stylized and highly convincing feigned terror. I escaped a very boring meeting. And of course for some time following I had to pretend I was a bee keeper. But the lie was worth the cost.  

It is good to be resourceful in a sub-rosa and dented way. My mother once confounded a traveling bible salesman by complimenting him on his camel hair blazer, then telling him all about the agony of John the Baptist who dressed in camel skin and, well, did he know that camel skin when wet starts to shrink, and worse, it a hot climate it causes profuse ithing? She went on in this manner, inviting the poor man to imagine John’s need to “get naked” at every oppotunity–and holding forth on the failure of biblical exegesis to put the whole matter in a proper light. On and on she went until the man ran away. He quite literally bounded across the lawn with his oversized satchel banging off his thighs. 

 

So what has happened to me? I’ve always been a progressive person–in junior high school I lectured classmates on the imbecility of voting for Nixon over Hubert Humphrey in our school’s “straw poll”–and I’ve been outspoken as an adult against every conceivalble imperial American blunder. But leave progressive politics out of the matter, I’ve become an almost irretrievable grump. 

 

Is it Facebook? Blogging? The easy megaphone of social media? Is it the natural coefficinet of aging? “The world used to be a better place, blah blah…” 

 

I don’t think so. The world is a better place today than it was during the Nixon admnistration. And its certainly better than it was in the ’50’s. 

 

Are we less civil now than we used to be? That’s hard to imagine when you think about the Civil War or the terrible sight of the KKK marching in Washington. 

 

Is it my camel hair underpants? 

 

I need to get my malarky back. 

 

Its time for me to dance in new costumes under the windows. 

 

Bring on the bible salesmen!