Man Bob Dylan Made Infamous With “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” Dies : Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

I won't delve into my personal situation, which is a much confused mix of pros and cons. But what a beautiful time it is to be an American. And at the most morbid and dark end of the national mood, may I say: what a perfect time for the non-eponymous subject of the Bob Dylan song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," William Zan(t)zinger to have snuffed it? That's change I can believe in!

Man Bob Dylan Made Infamous With “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” Dies : Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

Problems and Priorities

That last post was, obvs, made in a bad place. My anxiety was to say the least off the charts. But now I'm doing okayish, don't feel suffocated with dread, etc. One thing that helps: the national mood! If you look at polls, people still think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and in a way they're right. When it comes to a nation's direction, it's like a huge ship or something. You can't stop all of a sudden and you can't turn on a dime. It'll take years before we can really bring the wrong direction we're heading in to a complete halt and get turned around and moving in the right direction. But it's striking the other polling numbers that are coming out right about now in regards to the national mood, the inauguration, and whatnot. Pollingreport.com is a good site to have a look at a number of polls in one place. I was especially struck by polls of what people think is the biggest national problem--the economy just dwarfs all the other issues. The reason for that is obvious and all, but to see the way that Iraq and terrorism is a complete afterthought in relationship to the economy is striking. I've also really been uber-sincerely pumped by that plane landing in the Hudson River. It's the type of story you never see, where there are real heroes (as opposed to the bastardized overuse of the word this decade) and what should have been a disaster being completely averted. It really is a beautiful accidental metaphor for the place the country is in right now, hopefully. If they give the Captain, Sully Sullenberg a ticker tape parade, then I will forever take credit for that fact--I was posting all over facebook and blogs that we should give the fellow a ticker tape parade down NY's Canyon of Heroes. And if it happens and I take credit I'll only be a little deluded. I really was the first person to publically call for it--some columnist for the New York Daily News mentioned it in an article put up at like 3:00am the next day, but I was in there like eight hours before. The internet is an incredible thing.

Problems and Priorities

Just the facts

Am nauseous from anxiety three-fourths of the day. Chinese literature is fascinating, but I would grasp it better if the subjects were named Ralph and Chuck and Jim and such. It's a miracle I've never had an ulcer. If I keep having that thought I will develop an ulcer, because I always used to point out how I'd never broken a bone and then I broke a few. That is logical. Can't do anything about it. Every time, I tell myself, "This is the time I won't be able to hack it." Then I do. But this time I won't be able to hack it.

Holy shit the decade's nearly over

It is another year. I believe that year is the two-thousand-and-ninth since the birth of Our Lord and Savior, as reckoned by a Dark Ages monk who was off by three to six years. 2008 was a bad year, speaking both personally and collectively for the nation/world. However the trend in my case was from rather bad to rather better, while the collective trend was from slightly bad to fucking terrible. So I'm hoping that my well-being and the well-being of every else as a whole is in some manner inversely related to one another, because Lord knows, the Word made Flesh approximately but definitely not exactly 2009 years ago knows, the train to Shit Town has only just pulled out of the station. I'm figuring 2009 will make the year recently concluded seem like receiving oral sex while piloting a diamond-encrusted automobile along the peppermint-paved road that weaves lazily through Teddy Bear & Hashish Forest. I base this inverse-welfare idea on nothing really, just the two opposing trajectories of 2008 and I suppose its fitting well enough with my own bilious conception of myself--suffering as others prosper, prospering as others suffer. I return to college in two days. My sabbatical will have lasted approximately 49 weeks. My fate, I feel, rests in my modest daily dose of Klonopin. And Campral. And a couple other psychoactive drugs. Science protect me!