03/18/2003 Entry: "Distracted And Uneasy: The American Way!"

My long black trenchcoat is at the cleaners. An overzealous busser at Home managed to dribble Chickpea-in-Spicy-Sauce all over it the other week. It probably needed it anyway, as I wear it everywhere like a security blanket. But it won't be ready until Friday. (I felt like asking, "Can I get this back before World War Three starts?") Consequently I feel a little like Superman without his cape. My tenuous social identity as a Goth feels stretched a little tightly while I'm wearing this wool jacket with our corporate logo on the cuff. It's a nice jacket, and it's warm and black, but I generally do not wish to be identified as a "company" man, and particularly not a "sporty" one.

(Mother, I see what you're thinking and no, I don't need another long coat!)

Like many of my Web friends, I am a bit numb now that Shrub seems to have got the War he so desperately wanted. I'm having a hard time shifting emotional gears from arguing against the war to merely hoping that casualties are low for all sides. I'm also having a hard time mustering the enthusiasm to make ads hyping the digital cameras that some are using for distraction. Somehow I feel a bit complicit being the grease under the wheels of American Capitalism right now, but fear that I'm being a do-nothing liberal, complaining while cashing his paycheck. I expect there's a ideological middle-ground that I'm just yet to find. (Kind of like the red-orange terror level that somehow got omitted the first time. How about Tangerine? Coral? Magenta? Raspberry?)

Only I can turn a trip to the cleaners into a crisis of personal and political identity. There is no point making myself any more anxious. I can only fondle my claim ticket and wait a couple of days.

Just like George, really.

Replies: One Comment

I saw you from afar, and was wondering why you didn't have your coat on.

Posted by geno @ 03/18/2003 03:30 PM PST