The Grouch Speaks: Overwhelmed by Ennui

This morning, when I left the gym, I felt overwhelmed by ennui.  I don’t know why I was down, but I knew what would fix the problem, a cup of coffee.  As some ad or other says, “Caffeine—makes you do stupid things faster and with more energy.”

I went across the street to La Bou, got my coffee and a staple in my Kamikaze diabetic diet—a chocolate croissant—and sat where I could watch all three big-screen television monitors.  I wanted to see how bad things were in Houston, which was largely underwater because of hurricane Harvey.  A base just outside of Houston was one of my first assignments in the air force.  After more than three years there, I left with fond memories.  Now I'd like to know what was happening.

On one TV a woman wearing an Egyptian fright mask was talking about something or other, what I don’t know.  The sound was off as was the captioning.  Then the captioning came on and gave her name:  Kim.  Ah, yes, one of the famed Kardashians, the twenty-first century’s replacements for the Gabor sisters (Google them) of years gone by.

The station broke, and a more-or-less news program came on.  Three people were talking about a pay-per-view fight, the conduct of which soaked people for millions of dollars to watch late at night.  One of the panelists asked this question: “What late-night activity would keep you up?”

Be serious.  I was talking, silently, to the TV, asking, Do you guys think about the words you use before you throw them out over the air?  I know what late-night activity would keep me up, and it’s none of your business.

I pivoted to look at the monitor in the middle of the room.  A courtroom drama was on, but no, it wasn’t, a commercial came on for a local law firm.

At one time it was illegal for lawyers to advertise; now it’s not.  I don’t have a problem with that, but I think that when the law was changed it should have included a requirement that professional actors be used and lawyers not be allowed to pretend to act.  The lawyers representing themselves on the screen before were as wooden as Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd—dummies used by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.

The TV monitor at the back of the room caught my eye.  People were doing something with a watermelon.  It was a food channel, or a cooking channel, something like that.  A man put a chunk of watermelon in a glass and then poured gin over it. Or vodka.  Or some phony booze.  It’s the concept that counts.  That appealed to me.

It was time for me to go.  I could check out Houston on the Google news feed at home, and what daytime television I'd seen still left me overwhelmed with ennui.

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What Would (Did) Mencken Say?

"The White House will be adorned by a downright moron”—H. L. Mencken.

Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English.   He preferred a shortened form of his name, H. L. Mencken, and was nicknamed the "Sage of Baltimore."

Snopes.com checked the authenticity of the quote used at the start of this post and verified that, yes, Mencken did in fact write those words.

Snopes went further and put the remark in the paragraph in which it was originally composed, thereby showing the context, which was not at all flattering to Americans: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Mencken was a skeptic.  He was acerbic. His barbs lived long lives and are scattered around the internet.

He distrusted humanity: “Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.”

He had a low opinion of his fellow Americans: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

He disliked the American form of government: “Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”

He thought little of the GOP: “In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”

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As a Good Ole Boy Might Say . . .

I enjoyed my air force days stationed with young men from the rural south, people today called Good Ole Boys.  They could do entertaining things with the English language, such as creating a simile like this:

 "His brain is so small that if you wadded it into a ball and shoved it up a gnat’s ass it would rattle like a walnut in a boxcar."

That remark can be applied to whomever you might think of.

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Power Outage

Our electricity was off because of a scheduled power outage.  I used the time to run errands.  I needed essentials—beer, wine, and insulin syringes.  I like to be mellow when I shoot up.

Necessary stuff taken care of, it was time to do something pointless, time to go to the mall.  The mall in this case is Sacramento’s Arden Fair Mall, two levels containing 165 retail tenants.  The mall’s website says it’s more than 1,100,000 square feet big.  A million square feet! 

But a million square feet is small footage compared to malls in Asia that are three to four times that size.  Somebody has probably written a book about super-sized malls, but I wondered if anyone has compared any of the malls to classic structures such as India's Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Giza, or the Roman Colosseum. If anyone has tried to elevate the shopping mall to timeless architectural status, I didn’t find a reference to it.  Moreover, some sort of record should survive so that people of the future will know that we are the era responsible for shopping malls, large dams, small electronics, and nuclear weapons.

Going to a mall is pointless for me because I don’t have the shopping gene.  Maybe I was born without it, or maybe it spun out of my system somewhere along the way.  I suppose a proper shopping gene could have been injected at some point, but it wasn’t, and I remain genetically unmodified, a non-GMO generic old man.

But I had time to kill until the power at home came back on, and my hunger gene pleaded for something to eat.  We, the hunger gene and I, went to the mall and into the food court.  Here is proof that there are no shortages of fat and sugar.  Rationalizing my choice on the knowledge that my blood sugar sags late in the morning and needs a pick-me-up, the kamikaze diabetic in me ordered a hot dog on a stick and a lemonade.  More than just a hot dog and a splinter, the whole creation is dipped in batter and deep-fat-fried so that it looks like what it is, a cocoon filled with carbs.

Then, something miraculous happened:  My phone rang!  In two years of owning a cell phone, this was only the second or third time I’d received a call on it.  That’s the result of deliberate use.  My wife and I got cell phones as backups for our intermittent land line, and we gave our cell numbers to very few people.

Actually, my phone didn’t ring but vibrated, which it was set to do.  I could feel it through the fabric of the pocket.  The vibration was quiet; no bystander would be distracted.  (All things that vibrate are not the same.  Just think of what kind of story you could write if you were in a crowded mall and saw a geezer with a vibrator.)  

Answering it would have to wait.  The food court was packed with noisy people, and I was enjoying a delicious repast of a hot dog on a stick and lemonade.

And, another miracle happened:  My phone vibrated—again!  A different caller this time. 

That was enough.  A trip to the mall and two phone calls was a good morning’s work.  I went home and lay down to experience my own personal power outage.

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